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I doubt that practical considerations relating to renovating a building's plumbing are very relevant. NYC is known for an aggressive zoning policy against commercial-to-residential conversations, which they overtly defend as policy (to keep NYC attractive for business headquarters). If it were infeasible to undertake commercial-to-residential conversions for practical/construction reasons, the city wouldn't need to go out of its way to ban them.

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They are extremely relevant. Office buildings have floor plates that are simply unlike residential ones. Rules of that kind are probably to discourage (i) conversions from commercial for old buildings that weren't as differentiated, possibly and (ii) stealth residential projects that are proposed as office for expedited planning review. SPUR recently hosted a panel with AIA and large developers which basically said that repurposing an existing office building is as expensive as ground-up development when it is feasible at all: https://twitter.com/maxdubler/status/1526651858143436801?s=2...

Great article on the problems of office to residential conversions. Essentially, good office buildings make bad residential, and vice-versa. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/real-estate/why-empty-offic...

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