Builders often include business expansion lots between the residences and the arterial road, purportedly for businesses like that. Hardly anyone ever buys one

Builders often include business expansion lots between the residences and the arterial road, purportedly for businesses like that. Hardly anyone ever buys one of the lots to build there until long after the area is already too developed to build a business building anywhere else. This indicates to me that developers tend to overvalue their owned lots near a neighborhood that they just filled with McMansions, almost as though they were selling lots that already had local businesses in them. They would do a lot better to just build the strip mall first, stick one franchised business in to anchor it, sell the house lots, then spin off the strip mall ownership into a separate business after 80% of the lots are built. The home builders see it as someone else's problem. The houses are their moneymaker, and the businesses can take care of themselves. It's almost as though they have never heard of loss leaders.