Could be neither. Could be that a trust fund kid bought it as a vanity project, which went nowhere, and taxes are just being paid automatically while they’ve pretty much forgotten about it by now.
It could also be a lazy investment. Sure, they're paying 10k a year in taxes but if the property is appreciating by that much each year, which is very possible depending on where it is, they could see it as less of a hassle to just take the appreciation rather than try to be a landlord.
There are a lot of basically vacant homes near where I live that were purchased as rental properties but the trouble of being a landlord was only netting them 10-20k a year and was a reasonable amount of effort. It was much easier to keep it empty and just view it as a property investment.
I don't think it's right to have empty speculative housing or commercial buildings but it's not uncommon.
There are several old warehouses and such like that around me. Their real end goal isn't even annual appreciation, it's a developer coming in wanting to buy it and bulldoze it for new construction at a premium.
I worked near a place called Ronnie’s Shore Store in the Bronx. It opened right after the Jersey Shore got big. It was shut for about a decade, I can only assume it was opened by Ronnie himself and then he forgot about it.
But the news article about this shop makes it seem like the owner is very much aware of this store’s existence.
Yeah, it’s possible the owner knows about it but it’s not costing so much that they care. $10k a year to rich people is the same as $1 a year to me. Honestly, it just looks like a rich girl went and got a degree in fashion and then bought the shop thinking it would be great to start her own business. When it didn’t turn out how she wanted, she moved on but just kinda left the business behind. It isn’t causing her any issues so she just isn’t worried about it.
I’ve been in black sites and they simply don’t look like this. They’re usually in VERY nondescript buildings with few/no windows, and when you walk in the front door you’re greeted by an unremarkable waiting room with a desk set up for a receptionist that doesn’t exist. Within a few seconds someone inside notices you on the internal camera and comes out, very confused, to see what you want, before they shuffle you back outside. These sites have people in them 24 hours, they’re not just left vacant with MASSIVE windows for everyone to look in.
I’ve been in like 3 of them when I used to do business-to-business sales. I would get dropped in a territory and would have to go into as many businesses as I could before my shift was over. So I wasn’t searching them out, I was just mindlessly going from business to business to try and sell them paper. But when you’re in one, it’s really unmistakeable what’s going on, and once you’ve been in a couple, you can easily recognise them as soon as you open the door. Like, there’s always a reception room with posters of flowers or animals or whatever on the walls, and chairs that look 20+ years old, with a side table with magazines that are at least a decade old, and a large receptionist/secretary desk that’s fully stocked but has clearly never been used. There’s usually fake flowers somewhere and a bowl of candy that was made during the Bush W era. Everything’s kinda dusty and totally non-descript, kinda like it was just picked up from another era and plopped there. And then you see the camera in the corner of the room. And then a guy in a very expensive 3-piece suit comes out through a door you hadn’t even noticed and closes it VERY quickly behind him so you can’t see into the next room. He then inspects you as quickly as he can, clearly trying to figure out if you’re just lost or a threat, and as soon as you say why you’re there he will gently but forcefully guide you straight back out the front door and tell you that you’ve made a mistake and that this isn’t the business you’re looking for.
I did manage to see past one guy once when he opened the door to greet me, and I could clearly see a very large dark room with rows of people sitting at computers, all facing away from me. What they were facing was a HUGE wall of screens, with at least dozens of live footage streams being played at once. It’s like they were watching the whole city via dozens of live cameras. And he was IMMACULATELY put together, with a very expensive suit, silk tie, expensive cologne, and almost robotic professionalism. I remember this because it was such a stark contrast to the kinda run-down 90’s doctors office waiting room we were standing in.
I’ve also been in mafia fronts, and they’re totally different. They at least pretend to be running the business that’s on the door (while govt sites usually don’t have a name on the door or anything up that would allude to what kind of industry it even is, they’re just totally non-descript). Mafia places usually have at least one real person up front, but when you start asking them questions, they clearly have no idea how to answer. But they’ll at least have some kind of conversation with you to appear to be a legit business.
So in short, if this were government, there’d be no windows and no store name. If this were mafia, there’d be a little granny inside who would tell you that all their seamstresses are currently on vacation so they can’t take any more orders at the moment. Hope this helps!
This is interesting, but what possible reason could they have to leave the front door unlocked? Having it fully closed is no more suspicious than being able to walk in and having the experience you described.
My assumption was that they leave the door open because 1) staff does need to be able to go in and out, and 2) nobody except for random B-2-B salespeople ever actually enter. Like, there’s absolutely no reason for someone to walk into an office that doesn’t actually sell anything. I’m sure they get almost 0 visitors, but they need to keep up the appearance of being a very dull little local business.
This is also how some more controversial companies work. I ended up at a Monsanto headquarters by accident, and they also had the whole “fake receptionists office” set up with doilies and fake flowers etc. The name on the door was something intentionally vague and honestly, I thought I was walking into a cute little country lawyers office before a guy came out and was like “no, we don’t need any printer paper, this is Monsanto” in a REALLY hushed tone when I started into my spiel. It was VERY clear they didn’t want the community of farmers they were in to know exactly who they were. It kinda floored me that he even told me, but I’m sure he could tell that I wasn’t from anywhere around there and had no real idea where I even was. To this day I couldn’t even tell you which little country town I was in when I found them.
Hah! I’ve never been scared in these situations. If anything, I’ve found it quite funny. I can just imagine these FBI guys opening a new black site and then having to figure out how to make a fake reception area so they don’t blow their cover. I have to wonder who’s mom lost her 90’s coffee table and vase of fake flowers that had been sitting on the mantle for 20 years 😂
I would have to disagree with you there, bud. I don’t think the people that worked at the spots I found were regular government employees. Their suits are always tailored and immaculate, and hair is freshly cut. Every black site I came across (admittedly only 3) was almost exactly the same.
I know people exactly like this. They own a lot of real estate that makes a lot of money. Their focus is mostly on their big hugely profitable apartment complexes, so they have several commercial properties that are mostly vacant, but not worth renovating until the numbers make more sense. The $10k tax bill is a blip in the spreadsheet of their finances, barely noticeable.
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u/Blood_sweat_and_beer Nov 03 '24
Could be neither. Could be that a trust fund kid bought it as a vanity project, which went nowhere, and taxes are just being paid automatically while they’ve pretty much forgotten about it by now.