Lower the rent.
People are downvoting me, but not really understanding what I'm saying. Even if there is more empty space, what is happening is that landlords are leaving them empty, which keeps the rents higher because there is still limited effective availability. They aren't going to rent to a small business because they don't want to get locked into a 5-10 year lease on a small business when they can potentially wait a bit and rent to a larger business who will pay more and likely survive longer.
Retail rent will fall because nobody is in the offices. Retail business will close because of less traffic, and thus there will be more space.
But, retail leases are typically 5-10+ years. Why would a landlord lower the rent now to a small business and get stuck in a long lease, when they don't know if the office space will recover and the big businesses will want to come back?
It is a game of chicken.
Also, at the beginning of Covid, several big businesses just refused to pay retail rent as a negotiating tactic. It would not surprise me if that happens again.
"Why would a landlord lower the rent now to a small business"
now.
> After a certain point, the building owner will have to choose between lowering rents, or having the building foreclosed on due to having no tenants
the fact that some people let some buildings sit empty for some time doesn't mean most will let most sit empty for most of the time
after all, the next best alternative for building owners is foreclosure or abandonment or sale at a loss, the next best alternative for businesses is 1 of a thousand different places, or just a remote workplace
They might not have the choice. Nobody is going to rent ground floor retail space in an area with no foot traffic. It is a race to zero all around.
of course they will, at a low enough rent, obviously, which is the point: lowering rent is indeed a choice, as is going bankrupt, abandoning the property, foreclosure, or selling it at whatever price
let the owner rent it for a dollar a month and we'll see if it gets rented
the owner probably wants a billion dollars and a pony, too, but what they can have are the options I listed
the reason they don't have tenants is because their asking rent is too high and demand is low
in capitalism, that means they should lower rent
as I said: capitalism
instead of trying to make the conversation about me or you, and instead of citing maybe-true singular anecdotes which don't prove your case (that space is limited, and lowering rent won't increase rentors), try just presenting the aggregate data showing that commercial landlords en masse have lowered rent to a dollar and still have these vacancies
WAIT!!!
Wait.
I fear what you heard was, "argue about your anecdote some more", but what I said was, show us the data
The under taxation of land results in land owners squatting on it without doing anything that society benefits from.
The problem is that would mean that the valuation of the real estate would need to change, which would imply debt repayment, and given higher interest rates: default or finance under onerous terms or being cash rich already.
At the end (as the Fed expects): defaults => lower real estate value ^ rents => cheaper food options.
And that is where usually executive is going to come in to save Government Supported Real Estate (GSE), and throw a wrench to Feds approach.
tl;dr: the government supports this situation it will come to make it worse once again /s.