In any discussion of housing shortages in a CRE context, there's often the question of whether conversions could work? Look at all that office stock waiting for someone to show back up to work. How about we convert buildings, turn them into apartments, rent them out, and help alleviate two problems at once: a housing need and the desire to make old office stock pay off?

Chris Cunningham, a research economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, and Anthony Orlando, an assistant professor at CalPoly Pomona, recently wrote an analysis for the bank of whether office conversions could meet housing demand.

Even without the Fed, there are questions. Many office buildings will never lend themselves to straightforward conversions to apartments. If they aren't rectangular with corridors opening to rooms on either side, of it there are columns everywhere, it can be difficult to make them work physically. Who'd want an apartment in the middle of a building without access to a window? And there are cities that don't want conversions because they make more tax revenue off business use and they badly want the revenue.