Commercial property deals in the US are starting to pick up at deep discounts
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Re: Commercial property deals in the US are starting to pick up at deep discounts
#2Paywall: https://archive.is/meem7>
Re: Commercial property deals in the US are starting to pick up at deep discounts
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Re: Commercial property deals in the US are starting to pick up at deep discounts
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Re: Commercial property deals in the US are starting to pick up at deep discounts
#5[flagged]
Except people continue to move to cities outside the U.S.
Even in the U.S. to the extent they aren’t it’s because rents continue to rise dramatically as cities are not keeping up with the demand for housing in their urban cores.
Additionally, cities getting more crowded does not imply they should get more dangerous.
In fact, during the pandemic crime increased in many cities such as NYC, SF, etc as the numbers of people out and about in public dwindled. As the number of people in these city centers have increased since then crime has been dropping.
Finally, if there was indeed an exodus from cities to suburbs, that would be a disaster for suburbs. Suburbs are incredibly expensive and unsustainable. At least in the U.S. suburbs are almost entirely subsidized by their core cities. Even the trashiest block of a city might fit several residents, a corner store, a smoke shop and a liquor store, all of which would generate far more in taxes for the state than the barely 1 suburban single family home that would fit in that space, and both require similar infrastructure like roads, trash collection, sewer systems, electricity/gas/water pipelines, etc.
Without cities providing the tremendous bang for the infrastructure buck in taxes to states across the U.S., most U.S. suburbs wouldn’t be sustainable. Strong Towns has done excellent work in describing this phenomenon.
Re: Commercial property deals in the US are starting to pick up at deep discounts
#6[flagged]
Giovanni Boccaccio wrote The Decameron about people getting out of Florence because of the plague in about 1353.
Florence is still very much a going concern and I think cities are not going away. Many cities are quite safe, schools are what people want them to be, and they're also much better for the environment than suburbs.
People did not "flee Rome to Gaul and Britannia" for a bit of fresh air - they conquered those places at sword point.
Re: Commercial property deals in the US are starting to pick up at deep discounts
#7[flagged]
Except people continue to move to cities outside the U.S. Even in the U.S. to the extent they aren’t it’s because rents continue to rise dramatically as cities are not keeping up with the demand for housing in their urban cores. Additionally, cities getting more crowded does not imply they should get more dangerous. In fact, during the pandemic crime increased in many cities such as NYC, SF, etc as the numbers of peo…
Agreed. “Nobody lives in cities any more, they can’t afford the rent there”.
Re: Commercial property deals in the US are starting to pick up at deep discounts
#8[flagged]
New York now has the lowest apartment vacancy rates in 50 years. But there’s a lot of empty storefronts and office space for lease - especially in the older office buildings. One could say that those should be fast tracked for conversion to residential properties - but those are a multi-year projects. So no help for housing in the short term.
Re: Commercial property deals in the US are starting to pick up at deep discounts
#9[flagged]
New York now has the lowest apartment vacancy rates in 50 years. But there’s a lot of empty storefronts and office space for lease - especially in the older office buildings. One could say that those should be fast tracked for conversion to residential properties - but those are a multi-year projects. So no help for housing in the short term.
A lot of commercial property can’t be converted efficiently due to regulatory requirements in how the structures are constructed. It would be better to tear it down in many cases.
Re: Commercial property deals in the US are starting to pick up at deep discounts
#10Interesting, but predictable.
The clamouring for "return to the office" was always a minority voice, and it seemed to be two major classes of people doing the clamouring - old fashioned managers who didn't believe staff could produce while at home, and those who made their living from forced commutes - a broad class of building owners and ancillary business owners such as meal providers.
The ancillary businesses I have sympathy for, but that activity is at least partly displaced to more local businesses, which I see as a net gain. More vibrant communities vs declining city centres - yes please!
But the building owners are screwed because it's not just the wage slave that's realised they don't need to commute (they may have always known), but the business owner too. A business owner who can look at the huge amount of cash leaking out of the business for their office lease and realise that line item can be crossed out completely, or markedly reduced to a headquarters with much smaller facilities. Sure, it's not 100% of them, but enough to make a big difference.
So I'm not surprised we're seeing a crash in the office-provision sector. I haven't set foot in one since 2020 and I don't intend that to change!