How Manhattan Became a Rich Ghost Town
theatlantic.com
How Manhattan Became a Rich Ghost Town
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Re: How Manhattan Became a Rich Ghost Town
#2It seems to me like in big cities, as this article describes what eventually will happen is the rich will buy up the property because nobody else can afford it, service workers won't be able to actually live within a reasonable distance in order to work there, and the city will exist mainly for 1) wealthy professionals, 2) people who use real estate to park their money, and 3) tourists. Regular working-class folk disappear.
When one visits the city in the daytime, it seems like it has activity because of the tourists, but it has no real indigenous activity.
Perhaps that's the steady state, because there are enough tourists to keep the city going economically.
Re: How Manhattan Became a Rich Ghost Town
#3Is there some legal issue at play here that the article isn't drawing attention to? Why is it a better idea to leave a property vacant than to have a short-term tenant?
Re: How Manhattan Became a Rich Ghost Town
#4I actually think that we no longer live in a capitalistic system. A lot of firms continue to behave in ways that capitalism should punish, but doesn’t. My current running theory is that our economy is more based around rent extraction, largely from land and companies that wield effective monopolies or oligopolies, rather than competition. This explains why we keep seeing things that make no sense from a capitalist point of view.
Re: How Manhattan Became a Rich Ghost Town
#5Is there some legal issue at play here that the article isn't drawing attention to? Why is it a better idea to leave a property vacant than to have a short-term tenant?
Probably something to do with contract lengths? I can't imagine many businesses wanting to rent a place for less than 2 years (to the point that there may be legal requirements for longer contracts?) and landlords might turn down offers for leases that long that are below what they perceive the value of the place being.
Re: How Manhattan Became a Rich Ghost Town
#6Is there some legal issue at play here that the article isn't drawing attention to? Why is it a better idea to leave a property vacant than to have a short-term tenant?
I thought the problem was almost the opposite of what the article discussed. I thought that commercial real estate almost always used long term leases and that owners are reluctant to sign them in a fast rising market. If your building is vacant, there is the possibility of selling to a developer with plans for a big development in the short term.
That would argue for being pretty happy about short-term leases, since they maintain that flexibility. But I don't really know much about this, I'd like to understand it better.
Re: How Manhattan Became a Rich Ghost Town
#7It seems to me like in big cities, as this article describes what eventually will happen is the rich will buy up the property because nobody else can afford it, service workers won't be able to actually live within a reasonable distance in order to work there, and the city will exist mainly for 1) wealthy professionals, 2) people who use real estate to park their money, and 3) tourists. Regular working-class folk dis…
Completely agree.
Re: How Manhattan Became a Rich Ghost Town
#8Is there some legal issue at play here that the article isn't drawing attention to? Why is it a better idea to leave a property vacant than to have a short-term tenant?
"If you are a hedge fund manager running a portfolio you leave it empty and take a write-off.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/dec/24/new-york-re...
Re: How Manhattan Became a Rich Ghost Town
#9Is there some legal issue at play here that the article isn't drawing attention to? Why is it a better idea to leave a property vacant than to have a short-term tenant?
I'd say it's like a gambler's addiction. They want to hold the property open because "Someday is going to call me and say they need 30,000 sq ft of retail space by next Tuesday, and I can't afford to lose that deal because there's a Halloween store using 500 sq ft this week and a Christmas tree shop in the parking lot next month"
Re: How Manhattan Became a Rich Ghost Town
#10It seems to me like in big cities, as this article describes what eventually will happen is the rich will buy up the property because nobody else can afford it, service workers won't be able to actually live within a reasonable distance in order to work there, and the city will exist mainly for 1) wealthy professionals, 2) people who use real estate to park their money, and 3) tourists. Regular working-class folk dis…
Anecdotally, that doesn't really seem to be the problem with New York and definitely not the problem the article is talking about.
Ground-level stores don't seem to be suffering from staffing issues, largely because in New York it's not uncommon to work in Manhattan but live in Staten Island or Jersey.
Instead, ground-level stores seem to be disappearing because commercial lease agreements are just insanely expensive and onerous. Landlords refuse to reduce rents (for several purported reasons) in an increasingly buyer-friendly real estate market.