Easier said than done. Limited space == Higher 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.
Space may be limited but it's not utilized. In my local metro's business district around 60% of storefronts are sitting vacant and yet rent for these spaces is still astronomical. And it's been that way since 2020. The push for a return to the office is a clear cash grab.
It is also because loans are still locked in to ZIRP-era rates. That keeps the cost of capital low and businesses that own those properties have a lot of room for them to be wildly unprofitable. It will take awhile for those loans to roll over to higher rates.
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?
A lot of those five-year contracts were negotiated before Covid and I suspect they will expire in the next year or two. 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.
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.
Except that isn't their only choices. It'll depend on their finances as well as the market futures. Many many buildings sit empty for ages for a whole bunch of different reasons. Can't just generalize into a binary like that.
given the choice between no money and money, most will choose money, and no amount of 'it depends' will change that
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
> Nobody is going to rent ground floor retail space in an area with no foot traffic
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
One more reason I just came across for you... maybe nobody wants to open a store in Gotham City and no amount of free rent can convince them otherwise...
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
Well the space is not limited anymore, as the commenters suggest. The natural progression is for rents to go lower.
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.
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.