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Anybody who has entered the retail business as a renter for the past 15 years has made a mistake. Because land lords do this to everybody. If their goal wasn't

Anybody who has entered the retail business as a renter for the past 15 years has made a mistake. Because land lords do this to everybody. If their goal wasn't to suck the lifeblood of people and businesses, then they would have invested their money into something different than becoming landlords. If you have a great retail idea, then you need to get investors behind you so that your company can outright own the stores. Otherwise you will be leeched on endlessly. It's incredibly hard to get on top if you're depending on the good will of landlords. Solution: Online shopping until the bubble collapses.

mhb 9mo ago
That's a nice just so story for the cases in which a landlord benefits due to the success of his tenant. Now do the ones where the property value goes down because of any of a zillion other factors.
- lux-lux-lux 9mo ago
  CRE has historically provided very good and stable returns, especially compared to retail businesses who face extreme failure rates and risk; trying to compare the two is insulting.
  - mhb 9mo ago
    So retail business owners are just dullards who can't figure this out like you can?
    - Supermancho 9mo ago
      I imagine most people are not capitalized, confidently practiced in it, or interested in that kind of business. Took 10 seconds to think about it.
      - mhb 9mo ago
        Maybe spend the next 10 seconds thinking about comparative advantage.
        Supermancho 9mo ago
        Deflection changes nothing.
    - lurk2 9mo ago
      I’ve worked with both. Retailers are not generally sophisticated investors; they don’t necessarily lose money, but if they don’t own the real estate, they are usually making less than they could have working a job and investing their earnings in an index fund. There is a similar trend with most small businesses outside of the knowledge sector. Real estate investors who buy, hold, or develop property professionally are almost always far more sophisticated, which is to say that they are more knowledgeable of the tradeoffs involved in their investments and can thus take calculated risks in order to achieve a particular outcome. People make suboptimal investments all the time. This can be the result of lifestylism (“I want to be a retailer!”), naiveté (“I’ll figure out the financials later.”), or path dependence (“I’ll become a retailer because it’s the only thing I know about.”).
      - mhb 9mo ago
        Yes. Fine. That's a more reasonable framing than that the goal of landlords is "to suck the lifeblood of people and businesses".
- carlosjobim 9mo ago
  What about it? Do property investors deserve guaranteed increase in asset value? Do other investors deserve that?
  - mhb 9mo ago
    Of course not. It's your apparent assumption that property investors are not providing value because it's certain to go up or something.
coryrc 9mo ago
They aren't selling in urban places. Spitballing solution: In addition to LVT, rental tax? Nah, that just drives the purchase price to a higher level. Hmm. Also it drives up the cost of the minimal viable business (hence the coffee sheds in parking lots). Allowing more supply is the only good answer.
- asdff 9mo ago
  We are in commercial zoning oversupply to be honest. New retail units going up all the time under apartments failing to lease because there is only so much retail demand, at least at the prices offered but we know people would rather take a loss from an empty unit they can write off than actually lower rent and underlying asset value they use for collateral for loans.
  - scienceman 9mo ago
    Could we fix that with a vacancy tax for retail?
    - asdff 9mo ago
      There are too many factors that intersect to lead to these outcomes that make it easy to detect any one silver bullet. Valuing a property based on rents seems to be another big issue since it sets up incentives to increase rent and valuations even when the real estate market doesn't support that rent increase.
      - carlosjobim 9mo ago
        Value the property tax based on rent, that won't interfere with the real market value.
    - coryrc 9mo ago
      It's part of the solution. Vacancy has negative externalities so we should tax it.
  - 9mo ago

mhb 9mo ago

That's a nice just so story for the cases in which a landlord benefits due to the success of his tenant. Now do the ones where the property value goes down because of any of a zillion other factors.

lux-lux-lux 9mo ago
CRE has historically provided very good and stable returns, especially compared to retail businesses who face extreme failure rates and risk; trying to compare the two is insulting.
- mhb 9mo ago
  So retail business owners are just dullards who can't figure this out like you can?
  - Supermancho 9mo ago
    I imagine most people are not capitalized, confidently practiced in it, or interested in that kind of business. Took 10 seconds to think about it.
    - mhb 9mo ago
      Maybe spend the next 10 seconds thinking about comparative advantage.
      - Supermancho 9mo ago
        Deflection changes nothing.
  - lurk2 9mo ago
    I’ve worked with both. Retailers are not generally sophisticated investors; they don’t necessarily lose money, but if they don’t own the real estate, they are usually making less than they could have working a job and investing their earnings in an index fund. There is a similar trend with most small businesses outside of the knowledge sector. Real estate investors who buy, hold, or develop property professionally are almost always far more sophisticated, which is to say that they are more knowledgeable of the tradeoffs involved in their investments and can thus take calculated risks in order to achieve a particular outcome. People make suboptimal investments all the time. This can be the result of lifestylism (“I want to be a retailer!”), naiveté (“I’ll figure out the financials later.”), or path dependence (“I’ll become a retailer because it’s the only thing I know about.”).
    - mhb 9mo ago
      Yes. Fine. That's a more reasonable framing than that the goal of landlords is "to suck the lifeblood of people and businesses".
carlosjobim 9mo ago
What about it? Do property investors deserve guaranteed increase in asset value? Do other investors deserve that?
- mhb 9mo ago
  Of course not. It's your apparent assumption that property investors are not providing value because it's certain to go up or something.

coryrc 9mo ago

They aren't selling in urban places. Spitballing solution: In addition to LVT, rental tax? Nah, that just drives the purchase price to a higher level. Hmm. Also it drives up the cost of the minimal viable business (hence the coffee sheds in parking lots). Allowing more supply is the only good answer.

asdff 9mo ago
We are in commercial zoning oversupply to be honest. New retail units going up all the time under apartments failing to lease because there is only so much retail demand, at least at the prices offered but we know people would rather take a loss from an empty unit they can write off than actually lower rent and underlying asset value they use for collateral for loans.
- scienceman 9mo ago
  Could we fix that with a vacancy tax for retail?
  - asdff 9mo ago
    There are too many factors that intersect to lead to these outcomes that make it easy to detect any one silver bullet. Valuing a property based on rents seems to be another big issue since it sets up incentives to increase rent and valuations even when the real estate market doesn't support that rent increase.
    - carlosjobim 9mo ago
      Value the property tax based on rent, that won't interfere with the real market value.
  - coryrc 9mo ago
    It's part of the solution. Vacancy has negative externalities so we should tax it.
- 9mo ago