As Texas’ main city areas grapple with a glut of vacant workplaces, state lawmakers could make it simpler to remodel empty workplace and business house into dwellings.
A invoice by state Sen. Bryan Hughes, a Mineola Republican, would successfully permit house owners of struggling workplace properties within the state’s largest cities to transform that house into residences. The invoice would forbid cities and counties from requiring house owners of flagging workplace buildings and business properties like buying malls and strip facilities to undergo a rezoning course of in the event that they need to add residences or condominiums.
The thought is amongst a slate of proposals state lawmakers are weighing to take away boundaries to housing development and enhance housing choices to place a dent in Texas’ deep housing scarcity — a key driver of the state’s excessive residence costs and rents.
“It’s a easy matter of wanting on the housing inventory that’s obtainable and searching on the rising demand, and taking a look at each choice to increase these alternatives,” Hughes stated in an interview. “The Lord’s not making new land.”
Few locations in Texas have gone untouched by the state’s rising housing prices. Greater than half of the state’s renters are “cost-burdened,” which means they spend greater than 30% of their revenue on conserving a roof over their heads, in keeping with a latest evaluation by the Joint Middle for Housing Research at Harvard College. Dwelling costs have vastly outpaced incomes.
Hughes’ invoice is a part of a collection of proposals state lawmakers are contemplating to permit extra houses to be constructed. A lot of these proposals take intention at cities’ zoning laws, which limit what sorts of houses might be constructed and the place. A rising physique of analysis reveals that enjoyable these guidelines may help cities add extra houses and comprise housing prices.
[Texas has a housing affordability crisis. Here’s how state lawmakers may tackle it in 2025.]
Some native officers are uneasy concerning the prospect of state lawmakers overriding metropolis zoning laws in a blanket method. Within the Austin suburb of Georgetown, officers are weighing modifications to town’s growth code to permit accent dwelling models and scale back lot-size necessities, Mayor Josh Schroeder stated. These sorts of selections, he stated, ought to stay on the native stage.
“To do it on this macro stage that doesn’t take into accounts the variations between Georgetown, Austin and Littlefield is just not the best way to deal with land use,” Schroeder stated.
The rise of distant work amid the COVID-19 pandemic drove up workplace vacancies in Texas’ main metropolitan areas. Staff in Texas’ largest cities have returned to the workplace at larger charges than their friends in different main U.S. cities, in keeping with information from Kastle Methods, a safety agency that tracks workplace occupancy. Nonetheless, emptiness charges for workplace house within the state’s main city areas stay above pre-pandemic ranges.
As workplaces emptied and housing prices exploded, housing advocates, workplace landlords and policymakers more and more eyed office-to-residential conversions to deal with a number of issues. Including residences would assist chip away on the nation’s housing scarcity, they’ve stated. Revamping lagging workplaces into residences would additionally maintain these properties financially viable, staving off blight and persevering with to generate property tax income for native governments and faculty districts.
Nonetheless, it isn’t a silver bullet. These conversions make up a small share of the nation’s homebuilding. Workplace-to-residential conversions have resulted in practically 28,000 new housing models nationwide since 2016, in keeping with figures from CBRE Group, a business actual property providers and funding agency. Of these, about 2,400 are in Texas. One other 2,800 models are underway or within the works in Texas, out of about 38,000 throughout the nation.
Changing workplaces to residences can usually be difficult, builders and actual property specialists have stated. For one, not each workplace constructing is smart to transform into housing owing to components like unwieldy ground plans and plumbing wants.
Zoning laws may get in the best way of office-to-residential conversions — a barrier Hughes is attempting to deal with.
Texas’ largest cities are inclined to routinely permit workplace buildings of their downtowns, the place workplace vacancies are maybe most seen, to turn out to be residences, in keeping with a Texas Tribune evaluation of metropolis zoning codes. Hughes’ proposal would unlock that very same profit for house owners of workplace buildings exterior of downtown neighborhoods.
If it turns into regulation, house owners of different kinds of buildings — together with business buildings, buying facilities and warehouses — who need to transform their house into residences or condominiums, would additionally not need to undergo the rezoning course of.
That course of might be pricey and prolonged, housing advocates and builders say — leading to larger prices for the eventual tenant, if builders aren’t deterred from transferring ahead with initiatives within the first place.
“When there’s extra prices concerned, finally that’s going to need to get handed off to the resident,” stated Jamee Jolly, who heads The Actual Property Council, a Dallas-based actual property commerce group.
The laws would solely apply in counties with greater than 420,000 residents — 13 of the state’s 254 counties — and municipalities inside these counties which have greater than 60,000 residents.
This text initially appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2025/02/21/texas-bill-vacant-office-residential-legislature/.
The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and fascinating Texans on state politics and coverage. Be taught extra at texastribune.org.
Photograph: A view of downtown Dallas from The Tower Membership on the forty eighth ground of the Santander Tower in downtown Dallas in 2023. Texas metros have a glut of vacant workplaces house and state lawmakers need to assist house owners convert that house into housing. Credit score: Ben Torres for The Texas Tribune
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