Manhattan continues converting offices into housing at a record clip — and 1 suburb isn’t far behind

Manhattan led the pack in office-to-apartment conversions nationwide last year — but a city in New York’s northern suburbs came in third.

Adaptive reuse projects across the country are proceeding at a record-setting pace, according to a new analysis from RentCafe.

While disused hotels proved the most attractive target for conversions, office flips are coming in hot — and one New York commuter city is outcompeting with massive US metros. 

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The city of White Plains placed among the big leagues. The seat of Westchester County offers its residents a mix of suburban perks and urban amenities.

Last year, White Plains celebrated the addition of 468 units to its housing supply. The boost came from the ambitious conversion of a 1960s AT&T office building into rentals. The newly transformed apartment community allowed the modest metro to beat out Houston, Texas for the third place ranking in nationwide office conversions.

As usual, overall, Manhattan is a trend setter. Although hotels accounted for more than 36% all new units last year, the Big Apple is leading the way in the increasingly popular office conversion trend. Manhattan’s 588 new apartments completed via adaptive reuse last year all came from one development — Pearl House, a 1970s office tower at 160 Water St. 

Close to 24,000 newly converted apartments opened up to renters across the country last year. The number of new units exceeded 2023 supplies by 50%, according to RentCafe, and doubled that of 2022. 

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A record-breaking 181,000 apartments are now in various stages of development across the nation, according to RentCafe, and a majority of them are former office spaces.

Manhattan remains the top city for future apartment conversions. Big-ticket projects are humming along from the center of Times Square down to the tip of the Financial District.

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One of the city’s most successful conversion projects is the massive 25 Water St. in the Financial District. Once occupied by JPMorgan Chase, the National Enquirer and the New York Daily News, the tower swapped is cubicles for more than 1,000 apartments that began welcoming residents in February.

Buzzy projects are underway in Midtown, too. There are 1,602 apartments promised at Pfizer’s former headquarters in Midtown East, and 1,250 new homes coming to the former home of Ernst & Young in Times Square. The shining towner at the corner of 57th Street and Lexington Avenue is also slated for redevelopment.

Chicago may have supplanted Manhattan as the nation’s conversion leader in 2024, but it won’t stay there for long. More than 100,000 conversions are in the pipeline across the country, according to Yardi Matrix data. A majority of those are former office spaces, followed by hotels and industrial properties.

Vacant schools, interestingly, saw the biggest jump in popularity last year. The RentCafe study identified nearly 2,000 new apartments created from former school buildings in 2024, marking at all-time high and a shocking fourfold increase from 2023.