Biden Takes on the Property Brothers
(00:01.114)
Oh, so the Biden administration is channeling their inner property brothers there from HGTV. This is kind of funny. I the story I see today, yesterday here on the podcast, we were making fun of all of the well, we’re making fun of we got to laugh at ourselves and our predicament all of the money that we the taxpayers are spending on empty office.
buildings, federal office buildings that, you know, the agriculture building 90% empty, most federal buildings 80% empty, 80% empty. But anyway, Biden’s got a plan. He’s got a plan and guess what it involves? Your money. Ah, you guessed it. That’s right taxpayers come on down because another $45 billion dollars
$45 billion in federal funds Joe Biden wants to make available to various different developers out there to convert offices into residential space. This is, they’re trying to tie this into some of his green initiatives, which involves super low cost loans, near transportation hubs.
The line in this one by Nick Romito, who is a leasing and asset management company, data company. Hope is not a strategy. The hope that if you convert it, they will come. Well, a lot depends on where that building is. And already you’ve got buildings in areas that used to be populated that are empty right now, and they’re brand new buildings.
And in particular, he’s talking about San Francisco and the issues that they have there and some other urban areas. You can build it all you want. You can fix it up. But if people don’t want to come, they’re not going to come. And again, one of the things that I’ve mentioned as well is a lot of this is wishful thinking and developers aren’t stupid. Sure, they’ll take your money. You know, they’ll take that cheap government money and they’ll try converting it. And if it’s not working.
(02:14.822)
out well, they’ll tell the government, well, you know, guess I know you gave us these low cost loans, but you know, we just can’t move these properties. We tried. We tried, you know, we’re gonna need more money, we’re gonna need more money to keep this thing going. And the reality is, it could be oftentimes much cheaper, just to knock a frickin building down. Just to knock a frickin building down. That was one of my ideas from a while ago. He’s talking about all these green dreams that they have out there.
You know what? I don’t care. Put up more parks as far as I’m concerned. Buildings empty. Knock it down. Plant some trees for all I care. But yeah, many of these old office buildings, it’s next to impossible. Another expert on this saying this is Warren Washburger from Ecom Capital.
Revamping old office buildings isn’t that simple. Less than 1% of all apartment units underway, less than 1% are office to residential conversions, despite everyone’s love affair with the idea. Many buildings won’t work. Thick concrete office floor plates often need to be drilled through and plumbing and heating systems overhauled with local building codes adding to the headache. Yep, we talked about that. We talked about that in terms of New York.
as well. It’s a lot easier and cheaper to demolish it and start over from scratch. That means buying buildings essentially at the cost of land. Again, yeah, that’s what needs to be done. I mean, it happens, people. Why? You’re still digging up ruins of old cities all around the globe at this point in time. They go away. And quite frankly,
Does anybody believe out there that the federal government is going to handle $45 billion of our taxpayer money like the Property Brothers would? Again, I’d rather. I’d rather you give it to the people over at HGTV. They figure out a better way of handling this entire thing. They can take a look at it and say, this is not going to work. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
(04:35.17)
There’s nothing wrong with that. I mentioned before, I said, you know, some of these buildings are going to have to come down. It’s the demographics have changed. Life has changed. But should the Fed be offloading as much office space? I don’t care. Offload it at a loss. OK, offload it at a loss. Get rid of it. Get rid of it. No one feels like maintaining any of this space anymore. It’s completely unnecessary. So rid yourselves of it.
But don’t, you know, start throwing more like we always do as a country, throw more good money after bad. And they’re calling this a green initiative as well. Right. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.
