In spite of a twenty-year real-estate in New York City, vacancy rates have doubled from 2.1 percent in 2012, to 4.2 percent in 2017. In one neighborhood, 161 shops (12 percent of storefronts in the neighborhood) are currently vacant.
One reason, of course, is online shopping, which takes away customers from physical stores. But landlords who charge outrageous rents are mostly to blame. They are refusing to rent to independent businessmen, hoping instead that a major chain will come, or that overall property values will increase, justifying a higher rent.
Ideas to fix the problem include restructuring the commercial rent tax, a 1963 levy that currently charges 3.9 percent on rents higher than $250,000 a year (in addition to the regular real estate taxes).
Recently, however, a new tax has been proposed. The mayor of New York City wants to charge a vacancy tax on landlords that leave their storefronts empty. How much of a tax and how long storefronts can remain empty are still being worked out. Vacancy taxes on residential properties are already in place in Canada, and are being proposed in Hong Kong.
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