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Comment by notlisted | Hacker News Reader

Nice find. It looks like a snapshot from 2015/2016. Shame there isn't a Foursquare-like "check-in" app to report new vacancies (or new occupants) incl. pictures of signs so we can have a live map.

By the way, I've noticed increased turnover and empty storefronts in many little town centers and strip malls in NJ/NY state, which is bad for residents and local tax revenue. In my town, people are actually angry at property-owners who seem to have no qualms about leaving stores empty for many years and rebuffing people with entrepreneurial ideas. I always wondered how they benefit from this...

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I always wondered how they benefit from this...

Balance sheet valuation of the property? Accepting a lower rent might require a write-down of the asset, perhaps even putting the real-estate investor under water if they're leveraged?

Sometimes capitalism is indeed schizoid, if I may freely paraphrase Marx. As in this case, when capitalism logic dictates (as you very well explain) that it's better to not receive any money at all compared to receiving some money (but which is under a computed and apparently rational threshold). Capitalism and the flow of money it's all make-believe.

This behavior isn't really capitalism, it is driven by flawed U.S. tax law which allows owners to deduct interest expenses and losses.

> perhaps even putting the real-estate investor under water if they're leveraged

This made me believe that the OP was talking about a loan, contracted from another private entity (like a bank), so that the real-estate investor renting the place at a sub-threshold price would have meant that the initial estimation on which the real-estate investor had received the loan were not met anymore in case of a refinancing (and most of these types of projects get re-financed from time to time).

> I always wondered how they benefit from this...

That's because their property's value as an investment vehicle has vastly eclipsed its value as something that humans can use.

I always wondered how they benefit from this...

If it's anything like NYC, they (I'm assuming you mean landlords) benefit through tax write-off. They can write off the lost income while they wait for a (hoped for) higher paying tenant.

Unless you know some pretty odd tax laws one cannot write off the act of refusing to make money. They can write off business expenses which on an empty building are likely to be not too much different from an occupied one (some are more, some are less). I think that in some cases waiting for more rent is right, in other cases it's simply investors (many overseas) using the space to park assets. They want their money out of GBP or Yuan and in US real estate, but they don't really want to be landlords. See also pretty much every condo in Vancouver.

I also save a lot on taxes by writing off the lost income from the one-million-dollar bonus I never get!

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