WE ARE IN A BUBBLE

Yesterday, I was walking from Times Square to Billionaires' Row on 57th Street and I came across a very serious phenomenon.

Times Square is on 42nd so there were 15 blocks of abandoned stores and homeless people on the street.

Okay, New York high street retail is dead in 2020-2021. Those stores over there sold souvenirs to tourists and New York just stopped receiving tourists.

So far so good.

The problem is, 3 years later, no one has bought the stores.

And they continue playing accumulating rats and cockroaches.

The reality is the following: the new generation does not have the money to buy assets.

In other words, supply is much greater than demand.

And it has an aggravating factor.

Many of the merchants at the time are over 60-70 years old. And their children's generation doesn't want to run the family business.

I grew up with a lot of money people. And this is a phenomenon that is very, very common in my network of contacts.

This means that when these old guards retire or die, there will be even more to offer on the market.

It makes no sense to buy commercial (and not even residential) real estate in such a scenario.

And the world's population just drops. People don't make kids anymore.

Do you agree that we have a generational bubble … or am I missing something in my street analysis?

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Discussion

The city I work in has a historic culture of key money for leases. Most of the leases on the market are being sold by +70 year old owner operators, but at incredibly unrealistic values. At some point soon this market is going to come crashing down as they can't carry on working forever and their kids and grandkids aren't interested.