Buying a chunk of property is very cash expensive for a growth company. If you think about it - do you want to invest in 'real estate' or your 'high growth bus

Buying a chunk of property is very cash expensive for a growth company. If you think about it - do you want to invest in 'real estate' or your 'high growth business'. And buildings are very expensive so it would be a huge amount of cash. And cash-flow is always an issue in a growth company. Of course, it would mostly be financed with a mortgage, but then you get into a weird balance sheet situation - massive asset, and if the company folds, or wants to move, what do you do with it? It's hard to just 'flip' a building. Do they want to 'manage a property' in that 'old area they used to be in'? Aside from the operational/cash flow issues, it wonks up the companies metrics as well. This 'big ball of assets' can distort all the reporting metrics. Companies really don't want to 'own' anything unless it's a totally core thing to their experience. Long-term leases can be negotiated with future pricing in mind. Think Hotels: Four Seasons and Fairmont don't even own most of their hotels! They get big, long-term funds (think Saudi sovereign funds) to buy the real estate, and then sing a super long term lease-deals and then the hotel is really just an 'operating company' with those physical asset off the balance sheet. 'Owning property' is usually a fundamentally different business than whatever is going on inside the buildings. If you are a 'growth' company, your cash is almost always better used in your business. If you are a 'massive fund' (or a bank) that needs to park gazillions of dollars around the world long-term and you want fairly low risk but some kind of return - you buy property. Is one way to look at it.