Are we seeing a resurgence in Office to Residential conversions – our experience is yes, with some fundamental commercial drivers coming into play.

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In the mid 2010’s there was a raft of office to residential conversions, driven largely through the permitted development changes allowed at the time, which saw the practice get involved in numerous conversions, predominantly in London. The character of these were interesting, largely 7 plus storey offices in the sub-urban hubs around London, such as Croydon, Sutton and more remotely Basildon, each delivered 100 plus units – and often requiring some quite complicated M&E, fire and structural inventions. What was clear though was this model was always going to be capped by competing demand for office space and that the supply of suitable buildings was going to taper – which was the case.

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Of course since then we have had the changes to working patterns brought on by Covid, and yes, of course there are organisations enforcing full return to work compliance, but there are many more which have recognised that to attract the best talent, remain dynamic and resilient that flexible working needs to be embraced – with the consequent reduction in floor space required (equally linked to far higher expectation in the quality of office facilities). Bearing this in mind many landlords are investing significantly in upgrading their office stock – which happily GTH has been very involved in, however some offices just do not offer the returns which would make this investment reasonable.

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So, once again we are seeing office space being released, in quantity to convert into residential space, which is now further supported by recent reforms in Permitted Development rights (Office to Residential Use under Permitted Development). What we are seeing though is that much of the space is typically smaller offices, often on high streets – often which local and other listings, which makes conversion complicated but also serves to reinvigorate high streets, and is actually delivering very exciting schemes, with good transport links, often very good schools accessible close by, and with all the conveniences an occupant may want at close hand.

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So where next?
Apart from the economic logic in maintaining these existing buildings and retrofitting them as part of the conversion, the environmental logic is also convincing – even the deep retrofit of a building typically is still going to give you a net carbon cost of approximately 50% over a new build or a business as usual approach (AD09 - Christian Dimbleby, Architype - Refurbishment and Retrofit Design Process on Vimeo).

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Watch this space for our upcoming conversions, or speak to us about yours, we’d love to get involved…