[jaaames]

"Meanwhile, 90 percent reported they have been trying to negotiate their leases, but their landlords wouldn’t budge."

This is alarming. It may seem like just another statistic lost in a bigger article, but it's symptomatic of a ticking time bomb in NYC, and commercial real estate more broadly.

Louis Rossmann had an excellent breakdown of why the landlords won't budge on the leases https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdfmMB1E_qk

tl;dr - the loans on these restaurants are all bundled into commercial mortgage backed securities (sound familiar?) and sold to wholesale investors, and the landlords are unable to change the terms of the lease, or the banks will revalue the underlying asset based on a multiple of the rent, and the owner will either essentially get margin called, or end up with negative equity, and default on the loan.

Can someone from Wall Street please add their thoughts?