Most of those 'empty' buildings are just ways for people to park money. If you rent it fine. If you dont that is fine too. The rent is not what they are look

Most of those 'empty' buildings are just ways for people to park money. If you rent it fine. If you dont that is fine too. The rent is not what they are looking for. They are basically looking for something that has maybe a slightly better yield than bonds. When you look at it as parking of assets as a hedge against inflation it makes more sense what is going on. But taxes you might say. They charge dumb rents on these places. So if you get a sucker willing to pay a way over priced rent for say 6 months or a year it may cover the taxes for 10-20 years. Meanwhile the cash value has usually at least matched along with inflation. Even if they do not cover with a sucker the rate of inflation may be higher than the taxes. Plus the possibility of buying into a 'hot market' and the value does actually increase (but that is speculation which is some of it). Why the 'dumb' rent why not have a reasonable one? Because they do not really want to rent. They do not want to deal with 'hey landlord the roof needs to be replaced again'. They want to deal with that when the time comes to liquidate it for whatever reason. Many people look at like the are running a property business. There are many of those types of companies out there (which is why they can play this game). But there are many people just looking to 'not be poor' and live off daddies money for the rest of their lives from their trust fund.