With affordable housing, especially the lack of it, a top topic of conversation in Osceola County, the conversation has moved to conversion.
As in turning old hotels, like those common along the U.S. Highway 192 corridor, into apartments.
A study by RentCafe, a nationwide apartment search website that follows trends in the rental market, shows that’s been a common occurrence in Kissimmee—by turning that surplus of hotels into new housing The study (found at https://www.rentcafe.com/blog/rentalmarket/market-snapshots/adaptive-reuse-apartments/) showed the city ranked second nationwide for hotel-to-apartment conversions in 2024 and took the top spot in Florida for repurposed hotels.
While Orlando in northern neighbor Orange County is set to follow suit with a growing pipeline of hotel conversion projects, it doesn’t even rank on the study’s top 10 of markets with the highest conversion rates.
Kissimmee converted 502 apartments in 2024, all from former hotels, placing it just behind Baltimore (550 units) and ahead of Jacksonville (423 units) for the most hotel-to-apartment conversions nationwide, the study said. Among Kissimmee’s major adaptive reuse projects is the conversion of the Champions World Resort Hotel, built in 1989, which was transformed into a 352-unit multifamily community.
And, according to RentCafe, Looking ahead, Kissimmee has 1,287 apartments in the adaptive reuse pipeline, all from hotel conversions, while Orlando is expected to add another 1,278 units from eight hotel projects.
Hotels once again dominated adaptive reuse in 2024, accounting for nearly 37% of all completed projects nationwide and producing more than 9,100 new apartments. Office conversions followed, making up about a quarter of all new units as cities across the U.S. continue repurposing aging commercial spaces into housing. Former office and industrial space and schools follow as types of buildings converted. The number of apartments resulting from converted buildings was close to 25,000 in 2024 nationwide—50% more than the units delivered the year before and double the figures in 2022, and quadruple the number in 2010, when the data points begin.
