Many commercial buildings are in crime ridden downtown big cities.
The conversions may look nice and shiny but within ten years they will be slums.
It depends on the city. There are several commercial office buildings here in Nashua that are in nice areas that are not fully rented. They would make nice residential properties IF they could change them.
They have done a lot of that with older textile mill buildings around here. Brick buildings with big windows and 12’ ceilings. Exposed wood beams and plenty of parking.
There is an entire section of downtown Manchester, NH that is comprised of the old Amoskeag textile mill buildings. Almost all of them have been converted to mixed use properties. There are bars, restaurants, a college, multiple high tech companies, apartments and condos. The floors and wooden beams in these buildings were industrial. They originally had literally tons of machinery in them at one point. They were all woolen mills.
Here is an example of a 20 story office building in downtown Manchester, NH they just remodeled to 1-3 bedroom apartments.
This building had been a 20 story office tower since 1972.
Brady-Sullivan, who owns the building since 2006 is a real estate development company. They own multiple apartment complexes in NH & MA. Some are the mill type buildings I previously mentioned.
Here is an article about the conversion: