DALLAS — From an 18th-floor apartment smack dab in the middle of downtown, a renter sipping coffee at a quartz countertop would have a view of towering office buildings and a distant horizon.

It’s a complicated idea that nonetheless has gotten the backing of the Biden administration — which in October launched an initiative to encourage cities and states to find ways to convert vacant office buildings into affordable housing, in part with federal financing.

For instance, nearly 20% of the office space in Austin’s central business district is sitting vacant, according to recent figures from CBRE Group, a commercial real estate services and investment firm.

“You’ve got interest rates, they’re high and maybe they haven’t finished rising,” said Phil Mobley, national director of office analytics at CoStar, a company that tracks commercial real estate.

Though there’s plenty of office-to-residential conversion activity going on in the country, it accounts for a small slice of the nation’s overall office space, said Julie Whelan, who studies trends in commercial real estate for CBRE.

The firm intends to convert nearly a quarter of the 6.5 million square feet of office space it owns in Dallas' urban core into residences, she said — a move that will produce close to 1,100 units.

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