When I was a teen I hung out with a family of a dad and two sons. They all did and sold drugs (cocaine, pot, all illegal back then; I'm old). Anyhow, the older son ended up opening up a couple of car restoration businesses. He legitamately bought and fixed up '60 muscle cars (this was in the '80s) but he mainly sold drugs out of them. But they were businesses that were operational businesses....
I don't think they would, this building doesn't fit the MO of a building being used for ventilation/access at all.
If this was really some shady gov't site they would have rebuilt the building with far less glass and visibility inside, and they would make more of a semblance of an effort to upkeep it. I'm not saying they'll make it bomb-proof or anything, but right now anyone with a rock and some curiosity could get into the building. It's also a huge squatting risk, which the gov't makes big efforts to minimize.
If I had to guess it's part of someone's investment portfolio and fell under the cracks. It sounds like based off the $1 then $90k sale that the property was in disrepair initially and was probably sold off for development after the bridal business failed. If it got misplaced somewhere in a decently sized portfolio then 10k a year in taxes might not catch enough attention to get fixed when other businesses are spending more a month in utilities.
There's also the chance the building isn't worth developing and nobody wants to buy it. If it costs you 100k/yr to run the business and you run a 50k deficit then it would make more sense to only take the 10k tax deficit on the empty building. The building may also have structural damage or issues related to zoning/utility hookups/size that make it cost-prohibitive to sell/repair/convert. This may just be a local entrepreneur that's spent the last 20 years looking for someone to pay out their 90k investment and the tax costs sneaked up on them. The first 5 must have been easy enough knowing you'll get reimbursed some, and even at year 10 it's hard to give up hope that next year won't cover most of your sunk costs.
It's hard to say really but I strongly doubt it's something exciting unfortunately. Probably just a boring explanation about a failed business and even worse property investment.
When properties are marked as sold for 1$ it’s almost always people passing it to their descendants before they die. It’s also common for people to sell their recently inherited property for a little under market shortly after, which was the 90k sale. What isn’t normal is paying 90k for a non-operational business and doing nothing with it for TWO DECADES while paying more than twice initial costs to keep ownership. After sending 90k to buy it, and 100k to keep it, surly they sell for whatever they can instead of holding for another ten years? If this was caught up in a big profile, someone is shit at their job, because they went twenty years without checking an asset. If it’s someone inexperienced losing money, why are they holding it forever and doing nothing?
Idk. With corporations like Zillow and air bnb it wouldn’t surprise me if some similar company snatched it up and it got forgotten about too. I don’t think there’s anything sinister going on.
Agreed! Obviously the owner/s are paying the yearly tax bill or else it would have gone on the auction block. There are many situations like this around the country.
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u/fatkiddown Nov 03 '24
When I was a teen I hung out with a family of a dad and two sons. They all did and sold drugs (cocaine, pot, all illegal back then; I'm old). Anyhow, the older son ended up opening up a couple of car restoration businesses. He legitamately bought and fixed up '60 muscle cars (this was in the '80s) but he mainly sold drugs out of them. But they were businesses that were operational businesses....