New apartments are turning up in unlikely places, as vacant hotels, office buildings, and even schools are being converted across the country this year to create a record-breaking 181,000 new apartments. This figure towers over the 25,000 conversions completed in 2024.
An Oct. 24 report from RentCafe found that while vacant hotels dominated the conversions in 2024, former schools took the lead spot as the fastest-growing type of adaptive reuse.
Hotels made up 37 percent of all adaptive reuse developments, followed by office spaces at nearly 24 percent, industrial buildings at 20 percent, and schools at 8 percent—well above the 3 percent recorded in 2023.
Of the almost 25,000 apartments completed in 2024, more than 9,100 came from repurposed hotels. Revamped office buildings accounted for around 5,900 apartments….