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How Manhattan Became a Rich Ghost Town

theatlantic.com

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Re: How Manhattan Became a Rich Ghost Town

#71

Post by ghaff »

addicted wrote: post #39
njn wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, cause coffee is so hard to make yourself. I guess I'll never understand the point of hipster coffee shops. I'm all for cozy cafes, but all the hipster style coffee places, like 9th st. espresso, are the opposite of that: more catering to the trendy, minimalist, i3-gaps ikea aesthetics of the mainstream of /r/unixporn.

This was always the case. Coffee shops are more about hanging out and finding a casual environment to work than about the coffee. You could replace the coffee with an hourly charge and it would probably have the same effect, except people are not really used to paying for a place to sit, so coffee becomes the way to extract the money. At least that’s how I, as someone who doesn’t drink coffee but finds himself in cof…

Back in the day before WiFi became ubiquitous Internet cafes were pretty common in a lot of cities. We still have them but we pretend they're coffee shops and subsidize seats with coffee purchases and assume the economics work out in the end.

Re: How Manhattan Became a Rich Ghost Town

#72

Post by davidf18 »

I live in Manhattan and the cost of rents and housing has been increasing primarily through rent-seeking behavior which limits housing density creating an artificial scarcity in land leading to a high cost of living. Simply fixing the zoning density restrictions would reduce the rent-seeking or "market failure" and would lower the cost of living in NYC. See Harvard Economist Edward Glaeser's work for more details.

Build Big, Bill http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/build-big-bill-article-1....

There is a NY State mandated minimum wage law that has been hurting many stores and has increased the cost of food in grocery stores, for instance.

It was mandated to $11 / hr to $13 (today, I think) to $15.

Thus, the real issue is the market failures in housing caused by politicians who limit the zoning density. The State, addressing the high cost of housing not by fixing the rent-seeking instead decided to increase minimum wage to a level that many independent establishments can no longer afford to stay in business.

Re: How Manhattan Became a Rich Ghost Town

#73

Post by hnhg »

mschuetz wrote: post #20
roenxi wrote: post #3

Is 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?

Looking at Vienna, it feels like the value of real-estate grows faster than what you'd earn by renting. E.g. you'd probably earn 3,000€ netto per year from a 200,000€ property, but it's value also rises by 4,000€ in the same time frame. Why renting it out for a little cash, and probably having to pay a landlord to manage it, when you're already earning more than that by simply sitting on it. I've just made some numbe…

You often (depending on region and property) have to pay some kind of ground rent and/or non-trivial tax that you can transfer to the occupant. Also they can pay for maintenance and also point out big problems (water leaks - yes they do happen and be very unwelcome even if you have insurance). Overall, the net gain is low but that's better than 3 or 4 years of a minor accumulating net loss. Also the management fee is say 10% to keep your place in shape, so actually quite cheap in reality if your own time is in any way expensive.

[Edit: multiply the costs if you have a portfolio of properties and you then realise that you can easily have a dent in your cash flow while your property is accumulating in value]

Re: How Manhattan Became a Rich Ghost Town

#74

Post by samstave »

If you want to see a ghost town - Tahoe City Ca is decimated by AirBnB+Money.

I grew up there, and I was there last weekend for my Dad's memorial service.... I hadnt been back to Tahoe City for some time - and man, its freaking depressingly bad.

The "mall" -- the Boat Works, has basically 4 shops any longer, the retail spaces near Tahoe City Golf is boarded up and has weeds - many retail spaces are empty, the freaking BANK had to close, restaurants arent doing well according to several people I know who have worked in them for ~35 years (at SunnySide, for example)....

and all my Dad's freinds/contemporaries blame SV Money + AirBnB -- in that there are no places for anyone to live. Houses arent being rented to people who would want to live there - both seasonally or long-term.

All the cheaper houses were bought up over the last decades and rebuilt with $1MM++ homes in their place (This happened to one area which was the "ghetto" in the 80s when I was a kid - where all the houses were replaced with >$1MM homes and became one of the most expensive zipcodes in the country - whereas it was where all the "poor" kids lived in the 80s)

Re: How Manhattan Became a Rich Ghost Town

#75

Post by samstave »

sarabande wrote: post #2

It 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…

See my comment ITT regarding Lake Tahoe - this has already happened there.

Re: How Manhattan Became a Rich Ghost Town

#76

Post by megaman8 »

It's not just Amazon. The next generation is far less materialistic than generations of the past. No one can blame them for not wanting to spend 500$ on a Gucci gucci bag or 400$ on overpriced jeans, especially when they've got all that student debt. Workplace clothes are changing as well. Less people are opting for the fancy suits. Retail needs to keep up with the changes and start offering something people actually want, like: coffee bars, museums, libraries, book exchanges, 2nd hand stores, places that offer experiences (like sculpting classes, etc). Or here's a crazy idea: let's actually start using some of the 2nd floor+ space for housing/residential and maybe the place won't be such a ghost town when more people can afford to live there.

Re: How Manhattan Became a Rich Ghost Town

#77

Post by neuromantik8086 »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #47
wgerard wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, this feels like an issue that will naturally fix itself over time, as landlords realize what they're asking for isn't reasonable.

> And, this feels like an issue that will naturally fix itself over time, as landlords realize what they're asking for isn't reasonable.

Except it won't, exactly because landlords are rational actors. Let's say the upkeep for a space is $400/mo, and the rental for that same space is 3000/mo. A storefront could be vacant for 2 years and a landlord would still turn a hefty profit if they were able to get someone to sign a one-year lease after the 2 years of vacancy.

NYC is a big place- for every 30000 people that think that the rent is unreasonable, there's 1 person who thinks that it is, and landlords only need that 1 person. Renters have no leverage here.

Re: How Manhattan Became a Rich Ghost Town

#78

Post by AnimalMuppet »

March_f6 wrote: post #46

I lived in NYC from 2009 to 2017 and can affirm the author's feeling. Over the span of those years, and mostly as of late, I saw many of my favorite brick and mortars (Rare books, sporting goods shops, record stores, etc.) all be replaced by coffee shops or juice places. Granted each of the above mentioned places have challenges with their respective industry but the feeling still stands. Having been born in North Te…

I'm pretty sure that, just as you pay to reuse Sears' old building, you also pay to build a new one. If the Sears building is cheap enough to be worth the remodel (plus the awkwardness of using a building that isn't custom-built for what you have in mind), well, then you reuse the Sears one.

Re: How Manhattan Became a Rich Ghost Town

#79

Post by pj_mukh »

roenxi wrote: post #3

Is 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 wonder if a vacant parcel tax would help here. Vancouver did this with varying success[1], and Oakland has this on the November ballot[2] If real-estate owners want to "wait" for a better deal, they should pay for the resulting blight (and speculation)

[1]: https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/why-an-empty-...

[2]: https://www.kqed.org/news/11689739/oakland-wants-to-tax-vaca...

Re: How Manhattan Became a Rich Ghost Town

#80

Post by naravara »

samstave wrote: post #74

If you want to see a ghost town - Tahoe City Ca is decimated by AirBnB+Money. I grew up there, and I was there last weekend for my Dad's memorial service.... I hadnt been back to Tahoe City for some time - and man, its freaking depressingly bad. The "mall" -- the Boat Works, has basically 4 shops any longer, the retail spaces near Tahoe City Golf is boarded up and has weeds - many retail spaces are empty, the freakin…

I think a lot of economic models severely underrate the extent to which overheated real-estate markets eat economic vitality alive. It's because most of the costs they impose (initially) aren't that easy to quantify, but you're basically grinding your seed corn by making it impossible for working people to be able to afford to live and making it impossible for small businesses that aren't bars or restaurants to have a viable business model. Where's your next generation of innovation going to come from when you've done that? What happens to the community that lives in a place when the people with all the land and political power have no stake in the community itself?
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