Small scale money laundering maybe. For the big money look at the property prices in London.

Serious question. I can see how to launder money in a shop, I'm failing to see how to launder money with property.

Surely you can't buy a £1M property in £20 notes right?

You can pay a £1M mortgage in £20 notes.

Rent used to be very, very low. Area was basically blighted, no? Everybody was moving out of eastern Germany.

Yeah but it's been sharply rising in the last 10-15 years and I'm not sure that the protections that exist for residential leases in Berlin exist in the same way for commercial. But still quite possible that the rent hasn't adjusted for many of these shops.

Residential and business rent can be disconnected. Isn't that what happened in SF? Massive oversupply of one because they're not interchangeable.

In Kansas City there are some highly gentrified city neighborhoods but then a block or two away a bunch of old warehouse-type factory buildings for rent.

You could be right, I honestly don't know. The media here tend to mostly cover the residential side of things. You do see stories of businesses like bars and bookshops being forced out when an investor buys a whole building that includes both commercial and residential spaces.