> In the US, too, it seems like there's a high amount of empty commercial/industrial real estate. Zoning keeps it from being usable by anything else.

Nope, the finance agreements keep that space empty.

Missing rent can generally be tacked onto the end of your financing. Lower rent causes the basis of your finance agreement to change and you will have to cough up cash.

So, owners are willing to let spaces sit empty for years to avoid having to paying cash (which they probably don't have) to the bank.

It's all musical chairs until higher interest rates cause a few failures which cascades through the entire system.

Yeah this is something that can easily be solved by a vacancy tax. It provides city revenue on top of fixing the economic deadweight loss, a double-win from an economic POV.

Good to see SF at least is moving in that direction.

That’s definitely worse.