Why not just let the market take care of it? I’d support not incentivizing vacant property (via the tax code, limiting deductible losses and/or write offs on real estate) but absolutely do not believe government has a right to force a property to rent their property out. That’s tyranny.

And what wound stop the property owner from just creating a “business” that is open “by appointment only”? There would be many ways around it.

The market only achieves the idealized results in ideal situations where supply and demand can freely change with minimal costs. Real estate in cities is inherently supply limited because you can't magic more land out of nowhere and building a larger building only kind of works for retail because upper floors make for shitty retail spaces.

There are also a lot of forces pushing building owners to keep rents high, principally because building value is partially determined by the rental rates of that building. So if an owner is angling to sell or get a loan they have a strong incentive to not lower rents so long as the rents are in line with the 'market' rate because it immediately lowers the value of their property if they do, potentially driving them underwater on any loans.

> creating a “business” that is open “by appointment only”

The law could easily address this with requirements about public accessibility. It's disingenuous to pretend the law has to use the broadest, most abusable definition of any word to create loop hole counter arguments.

> principally because building value is partially determined by the rental rates of that building

I've seen this cited a number of places, but I wonder where it originates. Like, could the head could be cut off the dragon by changing the rules on this— maybe creating some kind of system where the rental value is discounted x% for each month that the rent is not actually collected by a tenant using the space for its intended purpose (no "parking" the space as pop up storage units or something).

But yeah, is it banks, lenders, appraisers? Is this an actual rule or just a rule of thumb? As it stands, it seems there's basically no mechanism to push down commercial rents ever— it's an up-only ratchet because of this rent-derived-value thing.

> It's disingenuous to pretend the law has to use the broadest, most abusable definition of any word to create loop hole counter arguments.

Indeed, and usable definitions for a non-pretend business are I expect well-established in the context of things like shopping malls, where tenants have exactly this kind of agreement with the landlord not only that they will maintain a functioning storefront during the mall's operating hours, but that all the other stores will be occupied and operating too— no mall store wants to operate surrounded by boarded up windows any more than a non-mall store does, and it's the responsibility of the management to keep all the storefronts occupied.

> Why not just let the market take care of it?

Because land is an awful example of a free-market commodity. It's not like you can set up a land factory to drive prices down (outside the Netherlands and Singapore I suppose...), and it's something everyone needs to live an even vaguely decent life.

And even worse, someone who owns land doesn't need to do a damn thing to make it increase in price; it's the businesses and people living around it that do that. So money sitting in real-estate is far less useful to society than money invested into productive businesses.

There is nothing that says the free market doesn’t work for scarce and limited resources.

You don’t have to be able to “set up a land factory” for the free market to work.

Because free market isn’t free. The reason these properties aren’t rented out is tied to some off financial/financing incentives that encourage this activity.