A Seattle real estate firm has paid $25 million for a mostly vacant office building between Central and Harvard squares, and now plans to turn the eight-story tower into 125 apartments — marking Cambridge's first significant office-to-residential conversion. Tourbineau Real Estate Partners closed on the 86,000-square-foot building at 955 Massachusetts Ave. this month, picking it up for a fraction of what the previous owner paid just six years earlier.
That previous owner, Intercontinental Real Estate Corp., bought the building in 2020 for $101 million, near the height of the region's commercial real estate market, according to Bisnow. Tourbineau's $25 million purchase price represents a roughly 75% drop in value, underscoring just how far Cambridge office values have fallen. The building was only 20% leased at the time of the sale, with the remaining commercial tenants holding short-term leases set to expire soon, per the same outlet's reporting.
The Seattle-based firm's plan to convert the office building into 125 residential units was first detailed by Boston Business Journal. Tourbineau was founded just two years ago, in 2024, by Managing Partner Jonas Sylvester and Chief Investment Officer Benjamin Wong, who built the company specifically to acquire distressed commercial properties and convert them into housing, self-storage, or hospitality uses, according to Thesis Driven. Sylvester spent 17 years at real estate firm Unico Properties before starting Tourbineau.
A Market Built for Conversions
The near-vacant building made an ideal conversion candidate, since empty floors are far easier to gut and rebuild as apartments than ones full of active office tenants. Cambridge's broader office market tells a similarly grim story: commercial vacancy hit 26.9% in the second quarter of 2026, with total market availability climbing to 29.2%, according to CBRE. That figure has surged from a pre-slowdown rate that historically hovered below 12%, as tech and biotech firms have downsized or scrapped expansion plans.
Meanwhile, Cambridge's residential rental market remains as tight as its office market is loose. The city's average monthly rent stood at $3,521 in September, with a vacancy rate of just 2.37%, per Boston Pads data. That gap between empty offices and scarce apartments is exactly the kind of imbalance that makes conversions financially attractive for developers willing to take on the construction risk.
Cambridge Still Lags Boston on Conversions
Despite the pressure, large-scale office-to-housing conversions remain rare in Cambridge. The only other project currently proposed in the city is Alexandria Real Estate Equities' planned 31-unit residential development at 161 First St., the former Moderna headquarters — a project Hoodline detailed in its earlier report on the Moderna HQ housing swap, which involves Alexandria trading lab space for additional commercial density elsewhere in the city.
Boston, by contrast, has moved much further down this path, with 28 office-to-residential conversion projects on the books, according to Boston Business Journal's reporting. Seven were under construction, while 20 remained in planning or approval. Boston also actively subsidizes the trend: the city offers a 75% property tax abatement for up to 29 years and up to $4 million in state subsidies through its Downtown Office to Residential Conversion Pilot Program, per the City of Boston Planning Department. For developers pursuing similar conversions in Cambridge, local policies are another consideration.
Landlords weighing the future of Cambridge office properties have options beyond residential conversion.
Design Plans Ahead
Tourbineau's plans for the 125-unit project will take shape as it finalizes designs for 955 Massachusetts Ave.
Whether Tourbineau will need to seek out separate financing to cover the structural retrofitting costs of turning an office tower into apartments remains to be seen.
