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• The authors identified approximately 2,300 potentially underutilized commercial properties that, if fully utilized for residential purposes, could produce approximately 72,000 to 113,000 units of housing in Los Angeles County, depending on the mix of unit sizes.
• Hotel/motel properties appear to be the most feasible property type for conversion (conditional on converting rooms directly to housing units). The feasibility of office properties varies, with larger (one- and two-bedroom) apartment types generally appearing to be financially infeasible but with studio apartments showing more promise.
• The authors developed a simple index to rank neighborhoods in Los Angeles and adjacent small cities according to their desirability as a site for new housing using common social and environmental goals (employment density, rent levels, access to higher quality transit, and commuting time) and found that hotel/motel properties are primarily located in lower-ranked areas, whereas office properties are more common in higher-ranked areas.
• Insights from a series of expert interviews with architects, developers, and engineers with AR experience suggest that AR projects to convert hotel/motel properties to studio units typically are lower-risk propositions, since these properties already served a residential purpose, whereas the logistical and financial feasibility of converting office and retail properties depends significantly on the characteristics of each building (e.g., overall size, floor layout, construction type, condition).

Adaptive reuse (AR) refers to the repurposing of a building for a new, more valuable use while preserving as much of the existing structure as possible. A primary application of AR is the conversion of commercial properties for residential use.

In this report, the authors provide estimates of the number of residential units that could be produced through the AR of underutilized commercial real estate (CRE) in the Los Angeles area and provide evidence on the financial feasibility of creating these residential units. The results suggest that, if the properties identified as underutilized were all repurposed as housing, they would represent about 9 percent to 14 percent of the total housing Los Angeles County needs to produce over the next eight years, according to the Southern California Association of Governments. The authors also estimate the average financial feasibility of these properties for AR and find that the conversion of hotel/motel properties appears to be broadly feasible. However, they also note that the feasibility of AR using office properties—the most common property type in the sample—depends significantly on area-specific real estate prices and the size of the residential units to be produced (e.g., studio apartments versus one- or two-bedroom apartments).

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