A Winning Recipe for Office Conversions

The number of underutilized office buildings being converted into apartment units continues to steadily rise, largely due to the acceptance that the post-COVID hybrid work format is here to stay. At the start of 2026, the national office-to-apartment conversion pipeline reached 90,300 units, up 28 percent year over year and nearly four times larger than in 2022, according to RentCafe, a sister company of Yardi Matrix. 

Office conversions now account for almost half (47 percent) of all planned adaptive reuse projects nationwide (roughly 90,300 apartments out of 193,900 planned projects). 

Behind New York City and Washington, D.C., Chicago ranks third on the list for the largest office-to-apartment conversions pipeline, according to RentCafe. Cleveland and Cincinnati round out the top 10. Five other Midwest markets — Detroit, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Milwaukee and St. Louis — are included in the top 20.

These cities are deploying combinations of tax-increment financing (TIF), local tax abatements, Housing Trust Fund dollars and historic tax credits to support office conversions in their downtown districts, says Al Fiesel, commercial business unit leader at Chicago-based LJC Design & Engineering. 

“The specific tools differ by market, but the underlying premise recognizes that public participation is the mechanism that makes these projects viable.” ...

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RSK: Chicago is one of the top cities for office conversions. Milwaukee is in the top 20.