Cities wax and wane. A commenter a couple posts up in this chain (fwiw, they were arguing on the “there is a decline” side) shared a story with a 5% decrease. That’s not nothing, but it isn’t an extreme decline.

Visibly it looks like a 30-40% decline post-COVID.

I don’t which city you’re in where everything is in “extreme decline” but that’s not my experience traveling for work or to visit friends either.

I think it’s more likely that your experience is the unique one. Or you’re not experiencing the activities you’re not attending.

MidWest metro.

More than half of the office buildings downtown are empty, and the ones that do have something only have a business in a handful of offices on a handful of floors.

Because of that, people started moving away because of lack of nearby jobs.

As people moved away, rents increased in both commercial and residential spaces to cover losses.

Library attendance and checkouts are way down.

Public transportation use is down.

Tax revenue in the city is down, which means less support for public services.

It's fucking awful.

Yes, your city may be in decline. Time to move on to a better location, not every place is declining.

Landlords don't increase rents to "cover losses". That's not a real thing that happens. Rents are set at the market rate, with some variance and time lag for price discovery.

Commercial is in crisis

https://www.jimersonfirm.com/blog/2025/02/the-approaching-co...

I spent 3 years renting a commercial property that subsidized the rest of the property locations. As soon as my business left, the building and rest of the tenants were gone within 3 months.

It's now vacant, and has been for 2 years.

In many cases rent is set to prop up the value of the house to match the loan, not to match any market rate.

I.e. rather empty to not break the silent understanding with the bank than too make money.

Remember the stock is the product not the leases.

No, that's not how it works. You're just making things up. There's no such thing as a "silent understanding" with a bank. Either that's a covenant in the loan terms or it's not.