[notyourday]

> Why on earth would somebody who's interested in profit leave a property empty, rather than cash in on rent from tenants? It's not like its hard to get tenants. There's a whole support industry for finding and managing tenants. It's almost effortless.

Wear and tear.

[YorkshireSeason]

Cost of wear-and-tear is marginal in comparison with lost rental income.

Moreover, there is (some) wear-and-tear even if unoccupied, especially if not heated properly. Unoccupied properties are also more likely to be squatted, and vandalised.

[notyourday]

Those are the tales people told by people who are not landlords. The real estate investment money comes from two different categories:

1. Landlord leverages the cashflow to acquire property and bets on appreciation of real estate. Margins are very thin. These are the people who buy buildings when the asking price is less than 10x of a yearly rent roll and sell building at 12x-13x of yearly rent rolls ( longer for commercial). They are leveraged to the max. Think Trump Organization or Kushner Companies or your average landlord/slumlord.

2. Purely investment plays. Buildings/units are owned outright. Those typically are multi-hundred thousand to multi-million dollar condos. They are either used for hedging, money laundering or diversification. Tenant in this cases is irrelevant unless it is a specific kind of a tenant. One can see this all over NYC for example. Storefront and condos that sit empty or years.

[YorkshireSeason]

- An investor's margin on appreciation of real estate will be much higher if it's rented out rather than empty.

- An investor who owns whole buildings/units has massive economies of scale from renting out.

- Hedging, money laundering or diversification are orthogonal to letting/leaving-empty, see also the original article.

- I don't see empirical evidence of buildings/units are are owned outright and left empty in London and a substantial scale. Please supply quantitative evidence to the contrary if you have any. Where are all those empty building in London?

- Regarding landlord/slumlord. As far as I'm aware, most large developments are done by investment funds insurance etc. Names like Trump and Kushner are too emotionally charged to lead to a serious discussion, and I'd appreciate if you could quantify what fraction of the London property market is left empty for speculative purposes.