Being in a world intimidated by online resumes being rejected and everyone blaming you for not being perfect, hearing you tout your business success makes you feel kinda good knowing being talented and capable can go to the head of the line over nepotism or recruitability
I've never been able to get a real job. even today I can't get a job that pays thirty to forty thousand dollars. Every now and then I test this by applying to a bunch of jobs with a properly professionally put together resume just to remind myself that the moment I take my off off the ball and let things slack, I lose everything. It's over. It keeps me motivated to continue to be the best I can be in all of my endeavors and to never let things slack even when it's very tempting to. A lot of people like you will never be accepted into the normal world. I'm one of them. Instead of trying to bang my fists and feet against the front door of the real world, I went off and made my own. I believe that you'll have the ability to do the same in due time! It means a lot of time bumbling around, not having a fucking clue what you're doing with your life, where you live, what you'll eat, what tomorrow holds, dealing with the stress of there being no guarantee of a future, and the possibility that you're wasting all of your time for nothing. It's a hard thing to do. It all becomes worth it once something finally clicks. I don't blame most people for not having the stomach to do this. The only reason I had the stomach for it is because I had no choice. I think that's what makes it easiest for people like me. It's Not the fact that I'm special, smart, or brave. It's that we have no choice. It's a superpower because it forces you to do the thing that you need to do to live an awesome life later. The normal world sucks anyway; the best part of life is coming up with a plan to make your own. :)
@rossmanngroup We're headed into the 4th industrial revolution thanks to global neoloberal capitalism & it's corruption allowing a handful of billionaires to own and benefit solely from the tech we built & paid for as consumers, workers & tax payers. All service & factory jobs are being replaced by automation and all data analysist jobs will be next. Between sending our industry overseas & automation, I doubt there's many jobs around. They are just lying and making us blame ourselves for something they are perfectly aware they are doing to us. These people don't want us all to sit back & enjoy the fruits of our labour with this technology, they've made it clear they don't plan on giving us a UBI when the last job is automated. So then what? Capitalism will be redundant. We will rely on them to feed us without exchange for labour. Labour will loose all leverage. These western elites envision a dystopian transhumanist fully automated 'utopia' for themselves, not the rest of us.
@@rossmanngroup Thank you. I made a youtube channel 2 years ago and now I can live off of it (I'm from Hungary) and it's reassuring to listen to someone with the same point of view because I don't know anyone personally who does. My goal is to do the same to my viewers. You're putting good energy/karma/idk into the universe and it lands.
Thinking of restaurants makes it even more horrific. Like how many items per day you need to flip for this... Ignoring any other costs... How many opening hours were there again in a day?
this is 100% true but they provide service: the prices aren't equal in the country and goods need to be shipped in buld and shops are part of buildings. Somebody had to invest to build the building to rent out stores and that is the service which they should paid for and not for dreams of other investors.
they would need to hit -200% to get me in there, youre gonna have to pay me the cost of a building and give me a building before I would ever consider a disgusting place like that
I lived in NYC for two years. On the day I moved into the apartment while we were unloading the u-haul on a street with no traffic or parked cars I got a $200 parking ticket. Unknown to me u-haul paid the ticket and I also paid the ticket. Guess who got multiply screwed ? Did I hear anything from NY? Of course not - was I able to get redress, hell no. The rest of the 2 years there didn't get any better. Including being hit by a drunk driver that fled the scene and the police refusing to come and do their jobs despite calling 911 multiple times in a 4 hour period. F NYC. Moving out of there was such a relief. Looking at the place now and watching Cash Jordan videos .... man.
Because it worked so well for the banks last time in 2009, right? Some people never learn, because when they do a mistake, the taxpayers will foot the bill.
the articles talking about this selling for 97% off recently are misleading. normally a building sells with the dirt underneath it as part of the value. in this case, only the building itself sold, the ground underneath was sold off years ago to a different company who then rented it back to the company that owns the above ground part. the issue is the building doesn't even generate enough rent to pay for the ground lease hence the 'building' part above ground is almost worthless. also the property is mid-block and has hard-to-redesign floorplans so won't be easy to change the use to something else more appealing.
I stand corrected, pinning your comment for clarity. Thank you for correcting my impression based on my readings. I missed this. With regards to my 15 minute long speech, excited and hopeful, where I celebrated the return of the ladder I climbed to success in my youth; Please disregard completely. There is no hope here. This is what I get for posting an optimistic video. FML. There's nothing more depressing than realizing that the path I took from being a worthless, broke nobody to where I am now is gone forever for so many young upstarts. There's always new paths, and there will be many people infinitely more successful than I, but this was one of the ways to get started, to open that type of small business, to become something And feel pride in serving your local community. Seeing that it's permanently gone is so sad. I'll always remember that date that I had at that restaurant and how well it went. First time I ever felt genuinely appreciated. I was 16 or 17 at the time. I remember the smile of the waitress and that coy look on her face as she realized I was cheating on the coupons and trying to get it all sorted before my date came back from the bathroom; she let me do it anyway. The hug that my date gave me when I arrived there in spite of being late, just happy to see me. The fun memories I had at that place. Every time I walk by and I see a santander ATM in its place in a white-boxed room with no soul, I wanted to puke in my mouth. WTF happened to the city I grew up in? My first real landlord's name was John Grossbard, the John Grossbard that is referred to in that episode of Seinfeld, where Kramer says he got Grossbarred. He had the entire basement of 251 West 30th Street and it was called planet to planet studios. This was in what used to be known as the music building, before it was redesigned around 2019 into some bullshit playground for facebook-wannabe-startups. They kicked all the musicians out of the building & it stopped being the music building. Dan the Man had one of the most famous studios in that building. Such a nice guy. I hope he's doing well. I only got to meet him a handful of times in passing, But I remember him being such a gentleman. You sure wouldn't think it from the client list that he had going out of his room! Sean Price and everybody else, but they were all so kind in a way you would never imagine if you listened to their music. I would go to that building when I worked at 247, if somebody was having a technical problem I thought I could fix. I was always happy to help because my friend Jake worked in that building. It was like a family. I wouldn't ask for money. And if I needed a package signed for or I needed someone to vouch for me before renting john's studio I had no money to afford a deposit on, everyone in that building got me without a second thought. John rented me the large room in the back of the basement for $3,300 a month on a month to month basis and didn't require a security deposit. He didn't ask to look at my financials because he knew that I had none and that this would be a degrading question to someone in my position. But he gave me the space anyway, and he trusted that I'd do right by him. He gave me a chance. I rented the room that used to belong to MBK, Alicia Keys' old management company. I didn't even have a lease, just a handshake. I'll never forget the line he told me when there was a bug infestation; _"if I made this place any nicah, you couldn't afforahd it!"_ A nice old guy. A piece of shit, but a nice old guy :) He was an NYC landlord in the style of the 1970s, not the 2010s. After that, Allen Park gave me a chance at 186 First Avenue. Allen was a Korean immigrant who bought that building in the 80s, who was in his late 90s when he rented me that first store. He knew that I was in my early 20s, had no financial backing, wasn't a great business person. I was a kid with a dream who worked 70 hours a week to do right by my customers & retain the best Google and Yelp reviews in the area. Allen rented me that store in a heartbeat, blocks away from the New York University dorms. This was right next to a major train station in a bustling area of the busiest city in the world; for $3,500 a month. He said he could get more money for it, but he wanted someone honest who wouldn't be any trouble. He was happy to have me there. Allen gave me a chance. He trusted me. He didn't run my credit. He didn't ask for a bunch of proof of insurance, because he intuitively knew damn well I had none. He wrote me a lease that was only a few pages long, not the 96 to 200 page monstrosities you see today That you have to spend $5,000 on a lawyer just to comb through and negotiate so that you don't get fkd. At 186 1st ave, I eventually got 30+ customers a day, which pushed me to become the best & most efficient, hard-working version of myself. It forced me to have better customer service skills, prioritizing skills, social skills. There were so many people in that really tiny area, tiny city, eight and a half million people, right in the center of the highest population density in the world. And they all used the products whose boards I eventually became an expert in fixing. I had such a high sample rate of products so that I could do pattern recognition and learn what the standard faults were and infinite chances to fix something today even if I couldn't fix it yesterday. Realizing that all of that would never happen in today's New York City makes me incredibly sad. It's a mannequin where a person once stood. I have an odd personality. I never started this channel with the goal of becoming famous, nor was that ever possible in my wildest dreams. I wanted to throw the ladder I climbed to get where I was back down to the next generation of repair people who started where I did. No matter how much I tried, it went on fire behind me. I miss the place that allowed me to pursue all of my dreams. I couldn't have done that anyplace else in the world. I did it there, and now it's gone. No matter how hard I tried to toss a ladder back down, there was somebody else there to set it on fire. Whether anti-repair practices from manufacturers, ponzi scheme money laundering building owners, it's always something. The opportunity to live the life I lived will never be there for someone else born in my position. That fucks me in the soul in a way I can't put into words.
"don't you feel bad about the investors" No, I don't feel bad for people willingly and intentionally participating in a scam and trying to scam you. F them.
I never feel bad for investors unless they're investing in a product or person they believe in & get scammed. Nobody should feel bad for someone who willingly took a risk & they lost. It's like feeling bad that someone bought a lottery ticket & they didn't win. You deserve no pity.
@@bbbbbbb51 I would say it's worse than the lottery thing, because investors who weren't scammed by someone to go invest, KNOW what they're doing. They're banking on making profit, and how do you make profit in investing? By someone else losing money, most likely those who got scammed into it.
Lived in Manhattan for a year. Ate better than I ever thought I could eat. Saw all kinds of amazing things, daily, and nightly. Never needed a car. Almost never had a boring day. But the "For Lease" company ruled the city, even then. And Manhattan kept turning me over and shaking me like a couch until all my money fell out. I'm not a couch, I'm a person, damn it. Get your hands out of my cushions! So off I went. A bit sad, but with much more disposable income.
@@electron6825 If NYC had LA's type of weather, a lot of the dynamics would change. If NYC had SF's terrain or London's or Paris's charm & beauty, the dynamics would change too. Yet NYC has always done well, maybe in spite of itself, not necessarily because of itself.
Dont forget Louis, your repair videos earned you a lot of respect for the technical efforts in repair, but your "right to repair" efforts are legendary ))
Your heartfelt tribute to a bygone time made me think of a recent drive through the town I grew up in. All the small businesses were gone: the drug store, the barber, the butcher, the baker, the shoe repairman, the hardware store, the shoe store, the five and dime store- everything that made a town a town. It’s not just New York. It’s happened everywhere. Maybe not to such an extent as my hometown, but it’s happening. Your video was one of your best. Thank you.
@@Cheepchipsablei feel like its more accute in smaller cities and towns. They literally hit the point of failure as a city and become a ghost town that isnt a ghost yet. Just a patch of land with wayward souls, lost in the middle of nowhere with no means of getting to any respit from what society took with the internet. A place where the best jobs are blue collar and few and far between. Here in the big cities someone always needs something done.
In 2000 a coworker, who was an accounts receivable clerk, was able to buy his 1BR apartment. It was $150,000, and in an awesome spot in the East 50s. By 2006-2007 it was appraised around $1,000,000. Even with the 2008 global real estate crash, Manhattan apartment prices hardly pulled back at all. That $150,000 apartment likely could sell for several million now. That's not normal property appreciation.
In real world (without scams) apartment prices should never go up. Yes the value will go up due to inflation, and due to slow land conversion from outskirts to center of the city, but it will also go down due to aging and outdated technology (eg. lack of modern heat insulation), so the final price should more or less stay even.
@@hubertnnn You're not factoring in supply and demand to your estimations. if a lot of people want to live in a specific place in the city (say simply because it's hip and fashionable), prices will rise until they reach a new equilibrium because there are only so many units available in that area. If that area then becomes less fashionable, prices will drop as demand decreases and supply of available units increases. Fashionability comes and goes, it's not invariant like "is close to the main train station". Prices would absolutely flux even if the system was 100% fair and legit with no finance shell games or speculators in play. Buildings are also more than capable of being technically modernized, and for a lot of people that just want to live somewhere cool a technically modern building likely isn't a huge selling point. If your dream is living in a quaint old brownstone in a cute artsy and super hip neighborhood it may even be a turnoff.
Recently went to look at an apartment that had 2 bedrooms on the listing, but in person it only had 1. The listing agent claimed that the open concept dining room with no doors in the middle of the house was the second bedroom. It's not lying, it's real estate.
You reminiscing about how going into shops and it felt personal, made my heart hurt. I grew up in spokane Washington. I no longer live there but a few years ago I wanted to move back. I started following pages about the city. Then I found the Facebook page "spokane tweakers" and it's dozens of posts a day about RVs burning down from eth-m labs and robberies and crime. Then I thought "let's check out houses in my old ghetto neighborhood" Half a million dollars for a run down shack. Everything is soulless and I hate it here. The modern United States. It sucks. I told myself almost daily as a kid I would not lose that spark. But at 32. I lost the spark. I have a nice home, my health. Cars I wanted as a kid. I'm not struggling financially, and for some reason. I'm just not happy. The country, the economy, the insanity has jaded me. And I'm worried it's forever.
figure out what’s broken and start fixing it. Hint, it’s not you, it’s the world and your community. We all need to start reconnecting with each other instead of thinking buying stuff for ourselves is the answer.
"I told myself almost daily as a kid I would not lose that spark. But at 32. I lost the spark." Sounds like me a few years ago. Cynicism to cope kind of works for me so far.
@@Robnoxious77 The answer could be had in looking past delusion. As a social species, humans had really dropped the ball when they began to act like the baboons they're closely related to by becoming excessively territorial, and furthered that division through faith-based beliefs with their foundational basis being less real than the sun which shines upon us all.
I love how 15 years later, you still refrain from admitting you used publice electricity, in the fear that NYC will come after you....to get their cut. Friggin disgusting.
Ya well Im pretty sure california tried to fine companies for leaving the state... Come, the weather is fine! Oh you want to leave, fork it over buddy...
@@ms-jl6dl actually its a "public utility" the electricity you buy from them is private. No one has a right to know what you do with it, you have control over it, as long as you pay the bill. Perhaps it would have been better if OP stated steal instead of use, but one should have been able to draw such inference from the statement.
I actually really liked watching your repair videos- not because I want to learn how to repair things, but because watching and listening to a craftsman ply their trade is soothing. I miss those videos.
Before work-from-home was the looming spectre of commercial retail real estate. First it suffered from the rise of e-commerce in the 2000s. Which also brought down most suburban shopping malls. Then Amazon conquered almost all of retail. Now Chinese drop-shipping and manufacturer-to-consumer is basically finishing it off.
@@movinon1242 This -- retail brick and mortar existed because we humans didn't have readied real-time internet, and a shipping system that promises 3 day delivery.
@@movinon1242Personally I feel this goes further than retail but the real estate industry in general. Running a successful restaurant as a small business over anything else is a different concept. Amazon or China isn’t going to provide customers anything comparable to an experience or product that local restaurants offer. Live music, entertainment along with the overall experience still has a significant impact in communities. The money grab for leasing/renting crumbling brings more opportunities for the right businesses. Work from home brought insight that our culture rather ship-to shop over dealing with people. When it comes to culture, that will completely survive any retail business when providing an experience. Now I’m not talking about Applebees having a special location, leaning more to a local store, club or restaurant that provides something special that will be recognized and recommended for a lifetime. For example, Casa Bonita, exclusive restaurant with a huge impact on not just the local community, now well known nationally with a single location.
@@movinon1242 If there's no reason to go anywhere, then it's much easier to sell you a pod. They're already working on getting you to eat the bugs. Burger King and Tyson are, anyways. Oh and it has nothing to do with the ecosystem or climate change. Animal proteins are NECESSARY for the healthy development of strong-minded, able-bodied males. Which is a problem because when you're trying to enslave all of humanity to the anti-christ.... those are the ones who will fight back. If you take the meat, can prevent a resistnace before there's anything that has to be resisted "in the streets," as it were. A brilliant strategy... one that's been in the works for just shy of a few hundred years. Red shields and all that. Problem is it was never going to work. They lost due to their own nature, but they'll have a nice time at the wheel... _for a time... 2 times, and half a time._
I am in the SF Bay area and it's happening here as well. So bad. SF used to be one of the most fun cities in the world (and yes I have been all over the world) but now it's a ghost town of empty buildings down town (for lease!) . They would rather let it sent empty for years/decades rather then have a reasonable rent.
People care about what you do Louis Rossmann. Thank you for all the hard work you do fighting for right to repair and exposing the corruption in the tech industry. I enjoy your stories and explanations.
Most of these "rich* people have so much debt that they're technically poorer than the homeless guy who hasn't got a penny to his name. That probably includes the seller of this building. Maybe the buyer too.
the schadenfreude would be all well and fine if they didn't immediately find a way to get YOU, me and everyone but themselves to pay for their stupidity, greed and nearsightedness
@@iparizotto The elites propose two solutions. One is a totalitarian socialist system where the elite has control of all resources (and mismanages them horribly) through the party. The other is a totalitarian socialist system where the elite has control of all resources (and mismanages them horribly) through a few "private" conglomerates. When people like me call for a return to a free-er market, most self-identified socialists assume I want these people bailed out and left in charge, but the actual market solution is letting them fail and stay failed. Instead governments bail them out, give them subsidies, government contracts and so on. That's looking an awful lot like the second option above to me 🤔
There's no excuse for urban decay. Allowing malls and buildings to stay empty because all the businesses in them are slowly abandoning ship or are evicted should be fixed. It's an eyesore and a waste of a good location just to collect dust.
They cannot rent property out at what the market demands. Doing that would require a re-valuation of the company's assets based on the real rental income. If you have a mall of 100,000 sft, and 10,000 of it is leased at a rent of $100/ sqf, the whole mall is "valued" based on that: $10MM**. So you leave 90,000 sft empty. And accounting rules let you say the value of the 100,000 sft is based on what its worth once it is rented at existing (old, bubble -based) rates. If you rented that 90k sft out at its real value of $5-10/sft, suddenly the building is "valued" (in this illustration) at $1.63 million. The physical buildings of the mall is collateral on an $8MM loan. When its "value" is $10MM, this isn't a problem. When the new value is $1.63MM based on actual market rates, the company that owns the mall goes bankrupt. Obviously this is accounting trickery. But the lender doesn't want the mall to go under, and have to write off $6.3MM, as well as take ownership of a real estate property that no one will buy. They're not property managers. But changing the accounting rules now would not solve the problem. Using a different valuation method would eventually just be min/maxed in a completely different way. And in the interim, lots of good, healthy companies would be destroyed because everyone built their businesses on an agreed upon set of accepted accounting principles***. ** This is not at all how valuing commercial real estate really works. However, this example simply illustrates the general concept for understanding why CREs don't rent out a store in the mall for what it can actually bring in rental income. *** Changing valuation methodology in the middle of a crisis was one of the things that contributed to the downfall of many companies during the 2007/2008 Global Financial Crisis. Changing such accounting rules has to be a very long process. It allows companies to adjust. It must be done during a time of relative calm to avoid disasters. After all, we have these current accounting principles today because of the GFC of 2008 and changes demanded by our elected representatives.
@@movinon1242 what goes on in when they plan building those malls? it seems meme comdey version line goes up, endless customers, at least 1000$ per sqft income every month for sushi bar and dollar store.... thus 10mn or 100mn loan is taken and mall becomes way oversized and thus 95% of sqft is hard to get renters. I agree on your simple example logic, however it often starts when mall is built. So are malls demolished simply because "business model" failed from day0 ?
I'm in Stockholm, Sweden. Same applies here. For years I've been calling this city as dead, there are no small venues for music, although the rent is controlled it's based on making people in not so great areas pay the difference for those that live closer to the center and making no incentive to build flats to rent in the private sector, making it impossible to make back the money in less than 100 years so everything getting built is condominiums that costs about 20-50 years total income - before tax. All the small shops goes away, same as the cafés and restaurants, getting replaced by "Bröd & Salt", "Espressohouse", "Max", "Brödernas", "HM", which all gets subsidiaries from the state and relies on gig workers. "If you prove yourself, you might just get 10 hours work time this week" they tell the young. Millennials are screwed six ways from sunday and there are no places to do recreational stuff. Forget about having a car, working on a car, painting, sculpturing or whatever, unless you're good for a sweet million dollars or so. For the rest of us plebs, the only thing remaining is the hamsterwheel of 9-5, commuting through a hellish town that make Diablo 1 look cozy to a job that is not fullfilling. Commute back in the public transport that seems to want to go full Tokyo with cattle cars and people getting pushed in to the carts since there is no room. Fall back on the sofa and die watching netflix, then start the cycle again. I've done my part recalling, each time I set foot anywhere I don't see what is anymore, I see what was. What is now gone and replaced with "Bröd & Salt", "Espressohouse", "Max", "Brödernas", "HM" etc. There is no life. There is only people looking into their devices trying to keep the anxiety at bay at the same time they need to keep their loans paid for their shitty apartment in some suburb or the overly prices black-market 4th hand 600% marked up flat they rent from some bushwacker. And then we have all the crime and violence. Most people want to leave. A few years ago everyone wanted to move here, now everyone that is not a foreigner or have been duped by the lie of the brights lights, big city mentality want to leave or not come here. I want to thank Louis for his channel, it's been one of the factors that has opened my eyes and fueled my fire of leaving. Which I am now doing. Selling my small apartment to someone who for some reason wants to pay an exorbitant amount for 600 sqft in the burbs where they essentially will have nothing, whilst I will move away, into the country and have relieve myself of the stress that has given me nothing, where there may not be so many opportunities, but in reality, what opportunities does the metropolis actually grant? If you are not very well of at 30-35 it's time to face the fact that you are less likely to ever be and that you in fact are a loser in the game Urban Metropolis Game and are doomed to be the hamster in the wheel providing for those that make money off your back while giving little in return. It's go time.
A couple of years ago one of my daughter's friends visited with her friend from Sweden. We live outside NYC and I warned them about the crime in the city. The Swedish girl replied she was used to living with crime from back home. I was confused "But don't you live in Stockholm?" Then she described what Stockholm is like these days and I was shocked. When I grew up around gritty NYC in the '70's - '80's Sweden was considered a peaceful paradise, how did Swedes let it get so bad?
@@mitchmasterfix5292 I can explain, but it's multifaceted and would take a long time. But basically the socialist government decided that they were so great and that they could fix the world, so they build the "million project" (one million apartments) creating suburban box apartments which mentally drain anyone and then they filled it up with the suck of all immigrants and refugees from cultures and nations that are so far behind that they would never get to become anything else than the lowest worker ants. So the 2nd generation immigrants saw this and figured out that they stood zero chance to get anything else than the ghetto if they didn't turn to crime. So they did. And then it just spiraled on all levels.
@@mitchmasterfix5292 Greed, in Sweden we don't even have a minimum wage, you can pay people a total of 0 and get away with it. On top of that they will rape you with taxes, the average serf pays about 80% of their income in different form of taxes. People imagine this country as some socialist utopia but it's actually a highly capitalist country with an extreme wealth difference.
There has been a coordinated, ongoing attack against small business since at least as early as the 80's. I know this because I spent most of my working life self-employed and it just kept getting harder and harder until I quit. It began with sales taxes - which is a flat-rate revenue tax that they'll tell you doesn't cost you a thing because your customer pays it - but your customer only has so many dollars in their pocket and you are the one who has to collect the tax and do all the paperwork. It then moved onto 'goods and services' tax, which was just another revenue tax for everyone except lawyers. Insurance rates kept going up while coverage went down. Sometimes I had to pay a payroll tax (separate from 'income tax') just for hiring an employee. All of this was reflected in the cost of renting space, buying equipment, etc, etc. In the end I spent more time doing all the damn paperwork than I did earning a living.
Hey Louis, thanks for keeping us on the loop about this. The whole NYC / Commercial real estate genre of videos you have put out has been super valuable in life in addition to repair videos and all the right to repair info. Somehow after watching your videos for years i feel like i can see through BS and smell it already from miles away in life (and tech) 2000x better than five years ago thanks to you 😂
This is just another step toward the gentrification of NYC, where commercial real estate is converted into chain stores and tiny apartments. Cheaper than building new infrastructure.
Daaaamn, now I feel even older. I also still remember the video in which Louis and his employees took away the bat or whatever it was from some random guy who vandalized shit in NY during covid. That must have been a few years now too. Now I feel even more old... v.v
I first found your channel when you did your walk arounds in NYC, pointing out the dead store fronts. You basically called the great commercial real estate crash before anyone else!
As a long time electronics enthusiast, and having watching and subscribing to your channel for as long as I remember, I have always enjoyed your content. You maintained the American dream for as long as you can. You have inspired people throughout the world and showed us all how you could fix the "unfixable" devices that we have used to enhance our lives. The new generations to come will also be inspired. God bless you and your efforts.
This is not unique to NY, it's almost everywhere in NA. The rates and prices might not be the same but the formula is. In my little city of less than 300k people there are so many vacancies in the downtown that have been sitting there empty for almost a decade now, but the city is bustling the only people that still go downtown is homeless people and the suckers with office jobs. Commercial landlords not willing to reduce their lease rates, expecting to get 2014 rates (when we were at the center of a small economic boom that died long ago). These problems are fixable but nobody with the ability to wants to.
I expect the value of the assett is tied to the amount of money you can loan against it. May even be a tax reduction scheme to leave it vacant. We really need to burn tax law and start from scratch .
This has been slowly happening in sweden over the last 20 years too. Independent shops being replaced by chains, chains shutting down the locations due to not being profitable, the space being advertised as "for rent" for months if not years, and if something new opens there it's gone within another year. The town I moved to to go to uni had a mall that over the 8 years I lived in that town closed half its shops with no replacements. Certain types of shops (like, arts and crafts/hobby stores) simply did not exist in the city when I moved away.
@@LongDefiant No matter how long Im already left, its amazing to watch Tankies and Anarchists single handingly ruining the entire movement with their delulu fantasy
As a residential landlord in a flyover state, I find it hard to believe that a legitimate real estate investor could afford to have no income for over 10 years and still survive. They have to be laundering money, or the government has to be covering the losses. I must be ignorant.
My guess: They are used to generate billions of paper losses as a huge tax break. That or outright money laundering though usually money launderers have the good sense to make sure to have plenty of businesses to legitimize the operation.
@@NotMyProblem711 it's a combination of all the above and then some. 7 and 8 digit real estate purchases are fast tracked because they are the liquidity of the worlds economy so they face much less scrutiny than the poors
Bingo - which then gets laundered and embezzled back to favorable companies via “revitalization” projects. That was Portlands bread & butter for years…
Yep, and next it will be fines for anyone leaving NYC. Or more likely to make it a bit more legal.. exemptions from huge fees if you stay to make it too expensive to leave
In this case, it's the cost of a land lease, as the land rights were sold several years ago, and the land the building sits on is leased from the buyer.
Michael Hudson wrote article in 2001: "Where Did All the Land Go?" He found out that these commercial buildings didn't really pay any taxes. Buildings were depreciated at unrealistically high values. This allowed the owners to claim that the buildings were "wearing out" faster than the appreciation of the building. There was also some shenanigans with the way that FED calculated imputed land values. In 1993 FED stats land held by non-financial corporations had negative value: $-4 billion. One must also consider that 97% discount might not be available for public. Instead it's the discount that's given to buddies of the bankers so that the bankers can snatch the building for cheap, just before the bank that they are working for collapses.
I have been managing high-rise buildings in NYC for over 36 years and I can tell you for absolutely sure that a very very large number of buildings in NYC are tied to money laundering from all over the world. Placement is the first stage or phase of money laundering. Some make mistakes and are exposed but the majority are washed. This is one reason a building can stay vacant and no rush to lower the cost and find tenants. This one made mistakes and was exposed, Deutsche Bank Center (also known as One Columbus Circle and formerly the Time Warner Center. Another example is 161 Maiden Lane.
Um but the problem is that things are selling for what they're not worth, because of squatter whales that can price gouge through artificial vacancies.
Yet people buy houses for millions when they're barely worth thousands in reality. People buy Gucci when the prices have literally doubled on some products over 4 years. In 2020 I was looking at a pair of Gucci shoes that I liked. $400, not that bad. Now they cost around $800. And people are still fawning over premium brands even though it's not even premium. I had a pair of jeans from a discount clothes store. I had them for more than 6 years while in school. And I was running around on gravel and grass doing all sorts of activities. One hole in ONE of those two pairs. Got a pair of Levi's for weekend use. Those pants got torn through in 2 years while doing minimal physical activity. Discount pants cost $20. Levi's ON SALE cost $70. People don't pay based on what it's actually worth. Worth is rarely based on real world quality. It's emotion based. The problem now is that EVERYTHING has to be premium for some reason. Including discount brands. They pretend like they're selling you premium clothes, just like Gucci. $1,000 for a T-Shirt? Is it made out of carbon fibre weave? Most likely just cotton.
What was luck and good fortune to have the funds to get a house 6 years ago has all but gone. Even now though, with higher valuations of surrounding properties due to these new stick-builts going up in a hurry (in which resides toxic-as-hell HOA's), that good fortune dries up and can end up pricing you out of the home you've been working to own for many, many years. Sad AF.......
It's the product of the same thing: mortgage-backed securities. There's a reason they were outlawed in 1933, and doing Bank of America's literal "bidding" to rewrite the law and permit it again is predictably leading to the exact same situation. The solution is the same, and could have been repaired in 2008-2009, but wasn't. It can only be fixed when "assets" have crashed, and because it has been allowed to continue along with interest rates below the rate of inflation, it is only getting worse.
Louis - THANK YOU! The American Dream became the American Nightmare. You breath hope for many of us who remember the days of walking the streets of NYC as a kid, DREAMING of one day being a positive contributor to the things that made NYC great. The deceptive practices of our monetary system/policy has destroyed many dreams and many lives. I agree - screw the bankers - screw them hard! Thank you for being a voice for all of us who've been silenced, intimidated and financially wounded by their greed.
When I hear a story like that about NYC, I understand maybe a little bit why people have strong feelings for it. But... the NYC I've known my entire life is the same as the Los Angeles I grew up in that I can no longer live in. Decadent, ridiculous, unaffordable, unattainable, corrupt, and worthless.
just wanted to say, i enjoyed watching you repair things over the last 8 ish years (how long ive been watching) and still do go back to watch the old ones. but the new content is great to so keep it up man, do what makes you enjoy creating videos because thats why we like watching!
I am so glad to see you pop up in my feed again, for whatever mysterious algorithmic reason. I'm also delighted to see the collapse of the commercial RE market, and I wish, with you, that NYC will go back to being a city of a million little shops.
@@nicejungle you can also thank capitalism for getting us to this point we need capitalism just as much as we don't need it if capitalism gets too big it becomes a monster and destroys everything what we want to do is to avoid things getting too big you stop it where it becomes corrupt to hold it back from growing too much
seriously, there's a reason they're called "starving" artists. all the cool and interesting people in NYC were poor. once the rich kids and the real estate investors came to town they immediately ruined everything that made them want to come to the city in the first place.
@@travist.7279 turns out the ultra-rich are actually kind of boring and uncool. who knew?
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UBS's fire sale of 135 W 50th is complicated by the fact that the land doesn't come with it. It's owned by Safehold and leased back to the building owner.
How on Earth is that practical or possible? That's like buying a car and leasing the engine but less ridiculous because you can swap the engine out. How do you move a building to a new plot of land? What does the land owner do to maintain the land to justify the lease?
I try to recall better times in my life. Then I threw up because let’s just say the better times aren’t as good as I thought. I had a normal childhood then I find out I have schizophrenia 😂 your channel is really great I love the videos about rights to repair! I ring good stories. And the bad ones.
It is a distressed sale, so it won’t count. And NYC operating budget ballooned ever since. Now, collect enough of those on record and one the news transactions , there will be enough evidence to challenge their position in the courts.
"The economy is booming" says Paul Krugman of the NYT while literally everything is rotting around us. Who is it booming for is the better question to ask.
Doesn't a massive chunk of the city's tax revenue come from property taxes. If the real-estate market in NYC finally gets a reality check then the city will only spiral even faster than it already is.
Too late. Where do you think the banks are investing now? With verbo and air bnb they are venerable hotel companies able to profit off their holdings. Its partially why rent is now $4,000/mo for a house in southern California. Its why newport beach has an average home value of 5 million. One house for 58% of that NY retail property, on average...
Hopefully, the city will also run out of spoiled students with wealthy parents spending $4K/month for 1BR apts near campus. Then perhaps everyone else can overpay by 1K/month less.
Will never happen. Social media has just made it all the more popular because every person thinks they’re an “influencer” now and view moving to a city as a lifetime dream/goal. The bright eyed, hopeful entrepreneur Louis references in this video can no longer feasibly exist in major city’s in today’s America. Every city is overrun by the exact “hip” types you’re talking about, and as soon as they move in they begin pushing their demands on everyone/getting into politics so they can rearrange the city to fit their values/ideas. They’re also more than happy to spend 2-3x market value on rent because they live like rodents and split the costs of a single apartment amongst 3-4 people. I know this bc I speak from experience. Philly is currently being ruined by these exact types of people. What little character remains is from businesses that have been here for generations, but they are slowly dying out and being replaced by hipster cafes/microbreweries/restaurants because the city is completely overrun by the same “hip” morons that are now relocating from NYC/DC after they’ve already ruined those cities.
She was worth over 200 million last I checked. Even if she lost 97% of her money She is worth many, many multiples of me And she's set for life. Fuck repair. I should have opened a gym.
I was raised on a farm in WA state and lived rural until I was 18 and enlisted in the Army in 1980. I went through NYC and spent two days around late '81 and absolutely hated it. SOOOO MANY PEOPLE and so much garbage. And every Bodega I went into seemed ancient and filthy. I can't understand how anyone actually ENJOYS living in any large city but especially NYC When every business has bars on the windows and doors, its not a place for me.
*Agreed. Late 60s my Dad passed thru NYC on a couple of overseas deployments. Said it was a shithole, better to stay near JFK on LI. 2006 I did much the same deployments. Even worse. Will never return there.*
Bro anybody in NYC that ain't gang, politician, or a trust fund baby can't afford NYC. The blue collars of NYC are basically the peasants of the community, even though they do most of the work.
Purchase price just a drop in the bucket against the taxes and fees demanded by the city. Plus security, insurance, maintenance, utilities, etc. The new owner could lose money. At least if they assign rents based on the reset price, it will put pressire on other rents - maybe get the snowball rolling.
IIRC, these “97% off” skyscrapers were only for the price of the building itself and did not include the cost of the land underneath the building (which the original purchase price included). They sold the land separately and now the new buyers owe a huge land lease They likely still took a huge loss, but not that egregious
it breaks my heart seeing you echo my sentiments of corruption overtaking the chance for anyone to attempt living out their dreams, but i’m grateful someone with a platform your size is speaking up about it. the same thing is occurring in paris, london, manchester, milan, etc.
I still think that raising the property tax rate slowly on the owners for every month the space is vacant is the best way to incentivize these companies to lower their rent to an amount that makes sense. Bleed them out faster while raising funds for the government.
@@jamescarter8662No such thing as "good" capitalism. It's a predatory system that serves white people and their elites and harms Black and Brown people.
I doubt new york will ever return to a place of opportunity. This whole country is increasingly no longer a place of opportunity, and upwards mobility is the lowest it's been in ages. The greed of our current overlords is all consuming and will not stop until they take everything down with them.
I have been a long time subscriber. I started a repair business because of you. Thanks for all you do Louis. New York is getting worse. Hope to visit your business in Texas soon
I loved those real estate videos. that's when I first discovered you!! and then I stuck around bc I loved your ethics and content. I keep meaning to bring my computer over to your store since we both live in Austin! appreciate all you do.
You are spot on when you say there is an incentive for buildings to be vacant. It's a perfect example of how corrupt the government has become. The fact that there is more money in a business not making any money is beyond the pale ridiculous!
@@hyena280 Naw... you have already said you want to remain clueless. You cannot be taught. But I will give you a hint. In simple terms. There is more profit in the building sitting empty because owner can get a tax break for that. Who provides tax breaks? Government. Also if you listen to Louis, he also explains why they can't rent out for less because that will cause value to drop leading to financial consequences for any banks backing the financing on the property... which are regulated by... "gasp"... government. This is hardly scratching the surface but in a round about way... YOU are paying for the rich people to have overpriced assets to claim as part of their wealth. And because YOU wish to remain ignorant, you deserve to be oppressed like a simp.
55 square feet per technician is crazy! Call centers typically allocate 80 to 150 square feet per employee. Each technician's workstation should have around 100 to 150 square feet for the bench, tools, and move around space. Add an another 50 to 100 square feet per technician for storage of parts and tools
A call center needs that much space per employee? The ones I've seen, they got a cubicle. And of course the break room, bathrooms and whatever but no where close to 80 square feet of space. Unless you can overlap those specific areas to count...
8 million € was a very extravagant mansion with huuuuuge gardens and pools around it in france or italy. 8 MILLION was the price for a thing that only actors could afford. How is a building in NYC 8 million AFTER a price crash???
8 million is nothing for huge however many story building. It is New York and not some random countryside in france and italy - which were always low economy regions compared to literally "the City on planet earth" (i hate ny but that is true). The m^2 of the land alone is probably 8 million. 8 million in paris is also nothing. plus you have to include inflation which adds a lot. Dunno but on the cote d'azur, you definitely won't get your described mansion for 8 million either nowadays
@@Soapy-chan you tell me. You last sentence is literally "how is a building 8mil AFTER a price crash" which I understand as it should be lower, also added by your example of what you've got for 8mil back then. -> and you agreed with me in the follow up that 8mil for that building is nothing. So where are you at? Either your last sentence was meant differently somehow or you just wanted to point out about inflation (which I still can't rhyme sense in that sentence)
People think that online businesses are the reason why retail is dieing, but from my point of view thats not the reason really. I agree with you that is actually way more enjoyable experience walking around town and meeting people and checking in their goods and services live with your own eyes, touch with your own hands, talk about the products and services, have an experience out with your friends, family, kids and so on. You get nothing of that experience online, just click a few buttons and then sit on your couch watching TV until the package arrives, say hello and goodbye to the mailman.... Retail wouldnt have to be dieing if prices for rents and leases had not skyrocketed to the moon... Now imagine that thise building that they bought at a 97% discount, they could now rent out space for businesses extremely cheap which in turn means they actually can compete with online prizes and still make a good profit on their business, and people have a reason again to get out of their shoebox of an overpriced apartment, and get moving in the real world and experience things!!! Imagine that... Holy shit i cant say enough how i miss those times.
Eh, I like browsing shops full of stuff I want. What I don't like is running around town wasting time trying to find anyone who has the item I'm after. Online shopping lets me find what I want quickly and I don't even have to spend the time to go to the shop to get it. I can get on with my life. I can't see going back to physical shopping ever except for groceries.
@@nicholasvinen That sounds very depressing to always be in a rush somewhere, i think its quite nice to roam around with my kids in town and just go random places and check random stuff, i see it as quality time rather than a waste of time. The biggest problem is now the finances, inflation murdered purchasing power so cant really do this alot anymore because theres no money to stop at some store or restaurant or a cafe. Its sad really as a social person
Its not so simple. One store in the middle of nowhere surrounded by "for sale" signs wont do anything. For people to go around and do shopping you will need multiple stores in small area, so you wont end up with 90% commute 10% browse situation. You also need the stores to be diversified and not 10 stores with the exact same products. That's why Europe shopping malls have a certain style to them: You have a large central store selling cheap food that everyone uses for their weekly grocery's that brings people into the place, then you have a food section that allows them to eat dinner and stay in the mall longer, and finally you have the small stores with more specialized products that give you access to huge variate of products (something for everyone).
You may like those things, but you are in the minority. Everyone else would rather sit at home and wait for the delivery truck. In person retail is dying out, that's just the way it is now. Retail sales in general haven't stopped, they've just moved away from brick and mortar to the virtual.
It’s the same thing here. Someone got in these people’s ears and it ends up with a 50% retail vacant and dead neighborhoods while landlords insist on an inflated “market rate” because they’d rather have a huge tax write off than charge a fair rate. They would rather have empty units and a couple of stressed out small business people barely scraping by and losing their savings than 6 full units of happy, successful businesses. I don’t get it.
What's not to get. Its just corruption. Big companies don't want competition, because with competition capitalism would start working again and they will be forced to reduce prices or increase quality of products. So they use their contacts to make sure small businesses never happen
Louis tackles this at about the 4-minute mark in the vid. They can’t reduce the rent because the bank they owe money to will mark down the property’s value.
What about a local authority rule; "if your building is empty for more than a year they will seize it, rent it out for whatever anyone is will to pay in an auction and hand the money over to the owners minus fees"?
@@SioxerNikita I'd still say a year of "trying to rent" is enough time to indicate the price, but I also realise its not that easy to make regulation do what you want it to do. We need sellers to respond to supply and demand. This corruption of pretending to retain the value of a building is distorting the free market, its rife in bank lending too. Banks were allowed to keep trading when they were insolvent. Gov't held back regulation and didn't encourage house building to respond to high prices. Now prices have nearly got to those value, meanwhile noone can afford a house.
@@SioxerNikita Was gonna say, a year is nothing in the retail/commercial space (especially if there's something like the GFC). 3 years is more appropriate. Not only that, but how is "rented" defined? Because if there's a negotiation going on and the 1 year mark passes then what happens? And what's to stop a landlord from having someone "in negotiations" for 10 years because no potential tenants will meet their insane asking price?
They can't just seize people's property without compensation, that's unconstitutional in the united states. If NYC had to pay all of the owners of these buildings millions of dollars, they would go bankrupt before they even got through one percent of them.
This property racket is worldwide. Our town is a ruin here in Scotland, greedy landlords!!! They want Edinburgh and Glasgow main street prices for a rust belt town with less than 80,000 pop in central Scotland
I wonder if large banks and investment firms (like Blackrock) bought up a lot of NY property which inflated in price, because it was NYC property, then they would leverage that paper value to buy up property outside of NY which inflated property around the country. Self licking ice cream cone. Some people made lots of money, and when the cards come down...they jump on their yachts and wait for things to burn (and start a new company to buy everything up cheap and rebuild). Tin hat mode engaged!
always entertaining, i miss your walks. I grew up in NYC, lived in NYC and worked there. You are so correct in your assessment. It is no life for people who want to get ahead. It is broken and just getting worse. Never thought "Escape from New York" would become a reality.
I think every small business owner has their version of the story of how they started their first business. Your story was just as I would have expected. I enjoyed hearing it.
I am new to commenting on videos here and new to FUTO, yet I was here quietly on and off since the old days. I actually miss the repair videos, but understand and respect the evolution of this channel. The universe has called Louis to greater things - to be a much needed voice in this clusterf#@k of a problem we have in the realm of consumer rights. The defense of liberty is important. Our founding fathers fought and died over this. So did many others. Thank you, Louis for having the balls to take on this fight. As for geography, as a life-long resident of California, I share the same angst that many in NY like Louis feel. The very same politics have run CA and NY into the ground. So many of us over here talk about leaving (often to Texas) but never follow through. I have a few friends that actually did pack up and leave. Much respect and love to them. I admire Louis for not staying. NY lost a tremendously valuable business and social presence in Louis' exodus. Absolute f#@ktards, they are to have driven him to leave as he did. It's their loss, and it's a significant one. I was delighted and impressed to learn that Elon is leaving California. I am actually going to leave myself after I finish grad school. It's going to be a challenge to relocate 3 domestic and 5 feral cats, but I have an idea as to how to do it. Me and my camp over here have been captivated by two things recently, 1. The painting behind Louis. We thought at first that it was some sort of smart home panel/display, because why would you mount a picture/painting below a light switch? Then it became apparent that this was indeed a painting and clearly one that has value and its placement is of specific intention. 2. The window-like black-framed "picture" on the wall adjacent to the stairs. I thought this was a picture at first, but it seems too bright to be a picture. It looks like a window that has some nice wrought iron on the outside. However, there doesn't appear to be any window casing or window molding that is typical of windows. We are mystified over here moreso over this curious "window" than the painting, but the painting is a curiousity too. Louis probably mentioned it but I missed it.
My wife and I travel a lot for work, we get a client for 6 months or a year, fill up our suitcases and move to the clients city, do our job and then leave at the end of the contract. Weve lived in New York City for a few years in total, but not in a row. We were there in 96, 02, and 23. Holy cow how that city has changed. It was heartbreaking in 02 for obvious reasons. It was moreso in 23. We always stayed in the upper east side, different places, but the same general neighborhood. The feeling in 23 was like the spirit of the city was broken, everyone seemed really depressed. I didnt realize why there were so many closed businesses. Thanks for explaining. I hope thing turn around, nyc is such a unique part of the US that I am glad to get to spend time in.
Manhattan was a nightmare of traffic in 2013 with parking that ran 50 bucks on the average and a toll to get anywhere. If thats freedom, it can rot. I do not ❤ NY. Boston is way better. Similar vibes but way better enviornment.
Being in a world intimidated by online resumes being rejected and everyone blaming you for not being perfect, hearing you tout your business success makes you feel kinda good knowing being talented and capable can go to the head of the line over nepotism or recruitability
I've never been able to get a real job. even today I can't get a job that pays thirty to forty thousand dollars. Every now and then I test this by applying to a bunch of jobs with a properly professionally put together resume just to remind myself that the moment I take my off off the ball and let things slack, I lose everything. It's over.
It keeps me motivated to continue to be the best I can be in all of my endeavors and to never let things slack even when it's very tempting to.
A lot of people like you will never be accepted into the normal world. I'm one of them. Instead of trying to bang my fists and feet against the front door of the real world, I went off and made my own. I believe that you'll have the ability to do the same in due time!
It means a lot of time bumbling around, not having a fucking clue what you're doing with your life, where you live, what you'll eat, what tomorrow holds, dealing with the stress of there being no guarantee of a future, and the possibility that you're wasting all of your time for nothing. It's a hard thing to do. It all becomes worth it once something finally clicks.
I don't blame most people for not having the stomach to do this. The only reason I had the stomach for it is because I had no choice. I think that's what makes it easiest for people like me. It's Not the fact that I'm special, smart, or brave. It's that we have no choice. It's a superpower because it forces you to do the thing that you need to do to live an awesome life later.
The normal world sucks anyway; the best part of life is coming up with a plan to make your own. :)
@@rossmanngroup YT forcing you to log in now cant watch anything without being signed in
@rossmanngroup We're headed into the 4th industrial revolution thanks to global neoloberal capitalism & it's corruption allowing a handful of billionaires to own and benefit solely from the tech we built & paid for as consumers, workers & tax payers. All service & factory jobs are being replaced by automation and all data analysist jobs will be next. Between sending our industry overseas & automation, I doubt there's many jobs around. They are just lying and making us blame ourselves for something they are perfectly aware they are doing to us. These people don't want us all to sit back & enjoy the fruits of our labour with this technology, they've made it clear they don't plan on giving us a UBI when the last job is automated. So then what? Capitalism will be redundant. We will rely on them to feed us without exchange for labour. Labour will loose all leverage. These western elites envision a dystopian transhumanist fully automated 'utopia' for themselves, not the rest of us.
@@rossmanngroup Hey Louis, thanks for this, really resonated, for a random guy 6 states away...
@@rossmanngroup Thank you. I made a youtube channel 2 years ago and now I can live off of it (I'm from Hungary) and it's reassuring to listen to someone with the same point of view because I don't know anyone personally who does. My goal is to do the same to my viewers. You're putting good energy/karma/idk into the universe and it lands.
Again, I always have to remind myself that when Louis says a store costs $50,000, he means PER MONTH!
Well, yeah. If that was a buyout price then even I would buy it.
My brain automatically thinks that the price is per year and I have to manually tell it it’s per month then my brain breaks
What do you mean its only basically the average wage per month for a broken building!
So… how many laptops do you have to fix to carry that rent, factoring in salary for the workers..
500? 1000?
It’s the rocket equation all over.
Thinking of restaurants makes it even more horrific. Like how many items per day you need to flip for this... Ignoring any other costs... How many opening hours were there again in a day?
Finance people pretend they're smart but they really just live off of deception and misleading investors.
Real talk.
You sound like someone that doesn't understand finance.
this is 100% true but they provide service: the prices aren't equal in the country and goods need to be shipped in buld and shops are part of buildings. Somebody had to invest to build the building to rent out stores and that is the service which they should paid for and not for dreams of other investors.
Which is smart, in a scummy sort of way.
@@dancooper6002 So...just like a "finance person".
Even at 97% cheaper you still have to actually deal with New York, which is a price all too high on its own.
they would need to hit -200% to get me in there, youre gonna have to pay me the cost of a building and give me a building before I would ever consider a disgusting place like that
NYS and especially NYC is WAAAAAY too expensive for what it offers, especially due to the fact it seems NY is so anti small business.
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@@BEASTMODE-fe5mg NYC has an income tax. That's insane. Average people in NYC pay ~50% income tax and get f'all for it.
I lived in NYC for two years. On the day I moved into the apartment while we were unloading the u-haul on a street with no traffic or parked cars I got a $200 parking ticket. Unknown to me u-haul paid the ticket and I also paid the ticket. Guess who got multiply screwed ? Did I hear anything from NY? Of course not - was I able to get redress, hell no. The rest of the 2 years there didn't get any better. Including being hit by a drunk driver that fled the scene and the police refusing to come and do their jobs despite calling 911 multiple times in a 4 hour period. F NYC. Moving out of there was such a relief. Looking at the place now and watching Cash Jordan videos .... man.
Banks treating real estate as an investment product has destroyed affordability for residents.
Because it worked so well for the banks last time in 2009, right? Some people never learn, because when they do a mistake, the taxpayers will foot the bill.
Banks and investment firms, hedge funds, etc. And now they are doing the same with non-commercial real-estate (aka: residential!). Now THAT is scary.
the articles talking about this selling for 97% off recently are misleading. normally a building sells with the dirt underneath it as part of the value. in this case, only the building itself sold, the ground underneath was sold off years ago to a different company who then rented it back to the company that owns the above ground part. the issue is the building doesn't even generate enough rent to pay for the ground lease hence the 'building' part above ground is almost worthless. also the property is mid-block and has hard-to-redesign floorplans so won't be easy to change the use to something else more appealing.
I stand corrected, pinning your comment for clarity. Thank you for correcting my impression based on my readings. I missed this.
With regards to my 15 minute long speech, excited and hopeful, where I celebrated the return of the ladder I climbed to success in my youth; Please disregard completely. There is no hope here.
This is what I get for posting an optimistic video. FML.
There's nothing more depressing than realizing that the path I took from being a worthless, broke nobody to where I am now is gone forever for so many young upstarts. There's always new paths, and there will be many people infinitely more successful than I, but this was one of the ways to get started, to open that type of small business, to become something And feel pride in serving your local community. Seeing that it's permanently gone is so sad.
I'll always remember that date that I had at that restaurant and how well it went. First time I ever felt genuinely appreciated. I was 16 or 17 at the time. I remember the smile of the waitress and that coy look on her face as she realized I was cheating on the coupons and trying to get it all sorted before my date came back from the bathroom; she let me do it anyway. The hug that my date gave me when I arrived there in spite of being late, just happy to see me. The fun memories I had at that place.
Every time I walk by and I see a santander ATM in its place in a white-boxed room with no soul, I wanted to puke in my mouth. WTF happened to the city I grew up in?
My first real landlord's name was John Grossbard, the John Grossbard that is referred to in that episode of Seinfeld, where Kramer says he got Grossbarred. He had the entire basement of 251 West 30th Street and it was called planet to planet studios. This was in what used to be known as the music building, before it was redesigned around 2019 into some bullshit playground for facebook-wannabe-startups. They kicked all the musicians out of the building & it stopped being the music building. Dan the Man had one of the most famous studios in that building. Such a nice guy. I hope he's doing well. I only got to meet him a handful of times in passing, But I remember him being such a gentleman. You sure wouldn't think it from the client list that he had going out of his room! Sean Price and everybody else, but they were all so kind in a way you would never imagine if you listened to their music. I would go to that building when I worked at 247, if somebody was having a technical problem I thought I could fix. I was always happy to help because my friend Jake worked in that building. It was like a family. I wouldn't ask for money. And if I needed a package signed for or I needed someone to vouch for me before renting john's studio I had no money to afford a deposit on, everyone in that building got me without a second thought.
John rented me the large room in the back of the basement for $3,300 a month on a month to month basis and didn't require a security deposit. He didn't ask to look at my financials because he knew that I had none and that this would be a degrading question to someone in my position. But he gave me the space anyway, and he trusted that I'd do right by him. He gave me a chance. I rented the room that used to belong to MBK, Alicia Keys' old management company. I didn't even have a lease, just a handshake.
I'll never forget the line he told me when there was a bug infestation; _"if I made this place any nicah, you couldn't afforahd it!"_ A nice old guy. A piece of shit, but a nice old guy :) He was an NYC landlord in the style of the 1970s, not the 2010s.
After that, Allen Park gave me a chance at 186 First Avenue. Allen was a Korean immigrant who bought that building in the 80s, who was in his late 90s when he rented me that first store. He knew that I was in my early 20s, had no financial backing, wasn't a great business person. I was a kid with a dream who worked 70 hours a week to do right by my customers & retain the best Google and Yelp reviews in the area. Allen rented me that store in a heartbeat, blocks away from the New York University dorms. This was right next to a major train station in a bustling area of the busiest city in the world; for $3,500 a month. He said he could get more money for it, but he wanted someone honest who wouldn't be any trouble. He was happy to have me there.
Allen gave me a chance. He trusted me. He didn't run my credit. He didn't ask for a bunch of proof of insurance, because he intuitively knew damn well I had none. He wrote me a lease that was only a few pages long, not the 96 to 200 page monstrosities you see today That you have to spend $5,000 on a lawyer just to comb through and negotiate so that you don't get fkd.
At 186 1st ave, I eventually got 30+ customers a day, which pushed me to become the best & most efficient, hard-working version of myself. It forced me to have better customer service skills, prioritizing skills, social skills. There were so many people in that really tiny area, tiny city, eight and a half million people, right in the center of the highest population density in the world. And they all used the products whose boards I eventually became an expert in fixing. I had such a high sample rate of products so that I could do pattern recognition and learn what the standard faults were and infinite chances to fix something today even if I couldn't fix it yesterday.
Realizing that all of that would never happen in today's New York City makes me incredibly sad. It's a mannequin where a person once stood.
I have an odd personality. I never started this channel with the goal of becoming famous, nor was that ever possible in my wildest dreams. I wanted to throw the ladder I climbed to get where I was back down to the next generation of repair people who started where I did. No matter how much I tried, it went on fire behind me.
I miss the place that allowed me to pursue all of my dreams. I couldn't have done that anyplace else in the world. I did it there, and now it's gone. No matter how hard I tried to toss a ladder back down, there was somebody else there to set it on fire. Whether anti-repair practices from manufacturers, ponzi scheme money laundering building owners, it's always something. The opportunity to live the life I lived will never be there for someone else born in my position.
That fucks me in the soul in a way I can't put into words.
@@rossmanngroup ...man
Great comment!
@@rossmanngroupman who has lost all hope loses little bit of extra hope he didn't know he had.
@@rossmanngroup daaaang
"don't you feel bad about the investors"
No, I don't feel bad for people willingly and intentionally participating in a scam and trying to scam you. F them.
I never feel bad for investors unless they're investing in a product or person they believe in & get scammed. Nobody should feel bad for someone who willingly took a risk & they lost. It's like feeling bad that someone bought a lottery ticket & they didn't win. You deserve no pity.
@@bbbbbbb51 I would say it's worse than the lottery thing, because investors who weren't scammed by someone to go invest, KNOW what they're doing. They're banking on making profit, and how do you make profit in investing? By someone else losing money, most likely those who got scammed into it.
Investing is just gambling.
Yeah idk why would you feel bad for the people who drive up prices
@@DaddyFrosty exactly
Lived in Manhattan for a year. Ate better than I ever thought I could eat. Saw all kinds of amazing things, daily, and nightly. Never needed a car. Almost never had a boring day. But the "For Lease" company ruled the city, even then. And Manhattan kept turning me over and shaking me like a couch until all my money fell out. I'm not a couch, I'm a person, damn it. Get your hands out of my cushions! So off I went. A bit sad, but with much more disposable income.
Noir L.A. plays in the background
@@electron6825 If NYC had LA's type of weather, a lot of the dynamics would change. If NYC had SF's terrain or London's or Paris's charm & beauty, the dynamics would change too. Yet NYC has always done well, maybe in spite of itself, not necessarily because of itself.
Lemme see your cushions, couch person.
Florida is the same.. I'm tired of getting bent over said couch and being "pegged" to death.
I like the way you write
Dont forget Louis, your repair videos earned you a lot of respect for the technical efforts in repair, but your "right to repair" efforts are legendary ))
Your heartfelt tribute to a bygone time made me think of a recent drive through the town I grew up in. All the small businesses were gone: the drug store, the barber, the butcher, the baker, the shoe repairman, the hardware store, the shoe store, the five and dime store- everything that made a town a town. It’s not just New York. It’s happened everywhere. Maybe not to such an extent as my hometown, but it’s happening. Your video was one of your best. Thank you.
It's more acute in a large city because more people are affected.
I( expect a lot of what he said would apply to many generations.
@@Cheepchipsablei feel like its more accute in smaller cities and towns. They literally hit the point of failure as a city and become a ghost town that isnt a ghost yet. Just a patch of land with wayward souls, lost in the middle of nowhere with no means of getting to any respit from what society took with the internet. A place where the best jobs are blue collar and few and far between.
Here in the big cities someone always needs something done.
Yeah ... I used to have a business making buggy whips. I miss those better days.
All those businesses are now just one Super Walmart 😢
In 2000 a coworker, who was an accounts receivable clerk, was able to buy his 1BR apartment. It was $150,000, and in an awesome spot in the East 50s.
By 2006-2007 it was appraised around $1,000,000. Even with the 2008 global real estate crash, Manhattan apartment prices hardly pulled back at all.
That $150,000 apartment likely could sell for several million now.
That's not normal property appreciation.
In real world (without scams) apartment prices should never go up.
Yes the value will go up due to inflation, and due to slow land conversion from outskirts to center of the city,
but it will also go down due to aging and outdated technology (eg. lack of modern heat insulation),
so the final price should more or less stay even.
@@hubertnnnIt is time to learn about fractional reserve banking for you.
@@rkan2what do you think was the "scam" he was referring to?
@@hubertnnn You're not factoring in supply and demand to your estimations. if a lot of people want to live in a specific place in the city (say simply because it's hip and fashionable), prices will rise until they reach a new equilibrium because there are only so many units available in that area. If that area then becomes less fashionable, prices will drop as demand decreases and supply of available units increases. Fashionability comes and goes, it's not invariant like "is close to the main train station". Prices would absolutely flux even if the system was 100% fair and legit with no finance shell games or speculators in play.
Buildings are also more than capable of being technically modernized, and for a lot of people that just want to live somewhere cool a technically modern building likely isn't a huge selling point. If your dream is living in a quaint old brownstone in a cute artsy and super hip neighborhood it may even be a turnoff.
@@hubertnnnI don't think you understand basic market economics.
Recently went to look at an apartment that had 2 bedrooms on the listing, but in person it only had 1. The listing agent claimed that the open concept dining room with no doors in the middle of the house was the second bedroom. It's not lying, it's real estate.
You reminiscing about how going into shops and it felt personal, made my heart hurt. I grew up in spokane Washington. I no longer live there but a few years ago I wanted to move back. I started following pages about the city. Then I found the Facebook page "spokane tweakers" and it's dozens of posts a day about RVs burning down from eth-m labs and robberies and crime.
Then I thought "let's check out houses in my old ghetto neighborhood"
Half a million dollars for a run down shack.
Everything is soulless and I hate it here. The modern United States. It sucks.
I told myself almost daily as a kid I would not lose that spark. But at 32. I lost the spark. I have a nice home, my health. Cars I wanted as a kid. I'm not struggling financially, and for some reason. I'm just not happy. The country, the economy, the insanity has jaded me. And I'm worried it's forever.
Don't worry. It isn't forever. Well… your bones are, but not much else.
yeah, thats exactly how the majority of people in germany felt in the 20s, things will get better, just they it did for them
figure out what’s broken and start fixing it. Hint, it’s not you, it’s the world and your community. We all need to start reconnecting with each other instead of thinking buying stuff for ourselves is the answer.
"I told myself almost daily as a kid I would not lose that spark. But at 32. I lost the spark."
Sounds like me a few years ago. Cynicism to cope kind of works for me so far.
@@Robnoxious77 The answer could be had in looking past delusion. As a social species, humans had really dropped the ball when they began to act like the baboons they're closely related to by becoming excessively territorial, and furthered that division through faith-based beliefs with their foundational basis being less real than the sun which shines upon us all.
I love how 15 years later, you still refrain from admitting you used publice electricity, in the fear that NYC will come after you....to get their cut. Friggin disgusting.
To be fair, their ineptitude was shown in several of Louis's videos and they did try to give him fines even after his business left the state!
Ya well Im pretty sure california tried to fine companies for leaving the state...
Come, the weather is fine! Oh you want to leave, fork it over buddy...
? Everybody uses "public" electricity unless one owns a power station. Do you have private electricity ?
@@ms-jl6dl actually its a "public utility" the electricity you buy from them is private. No one has a right to know what you do with it, you have control over it, as long as you pay the bill.
Perhaps it would have been better if OP stated steal instead of use, but one should have been able to draw such inference from the statement.
@@ms-jl6dl We have Solar Panels at our house, we actually make surplus Electricity every month & get paid to generate it.
I actually really liked watching your repair videos- not because I want to learn how to repair things, but because watching and listening to a craftsman ply their trade is soothing. I miss those videos.
There's no way this has ended yet. Someone dropped the bag, but most people are still bagholders.
Before work-from-home was the looming spectre of commercial retail real estate.
First it suffered from the rise of e-commerce in the 2000s.
Which also brought down most suburban shopping malls.
Then Amazon conquered almost all of retail.
Now Chinese drop-shipping and manufacturer-to-consumer is basically finishing it off.
@@movinon1242 This -- retail brick and mortar existed because we humans didn't have readied real-time internet, and a shipping system that promises 3 day delivery.
@@movinon1242Personally I feel this goes further than retail but the real estate industry in general. Running a successful restaurant as a small business over anything else is a different concept. Amazon or China isn’t going to provide customers anything comparable to an experience or product that local restaurants offer. Live music, entertainment along with the overall experience still has a significant impact in communities. The money grab for leasing/renting crumbling brings more opportunities for the right businesses. Work from home brought insight that our culture rather ship-to shop over dealing with people. When it comes to culture, that will completely survive any retail business when providing an experience. Now I’m not talking about Applebees having a special location, leaning more to a local store, club or restaurant that provides something special that will be recognized and recommended for a lifetime. For example, Casa Bonita, exclusive restaurant with a huge impact on not just the local community, now well known nationally with a single location.
@@movinon1242 If there's no reason to go anywhere, then it's much easier to sell you a pod. They're already working on getting you to eat the bugs. Burger King and Tyson are, anyways. Oh and it has nothing to do with the ecosystem or climate change. Animal proteins are NECESSARY for the healthy development of strong-minded, able-bodied males. Which is a problem because when you're trying to enslave all of humanity to the anti-christ.... those are the ones who will fight back.
If you take the meat, can prevent a resistnace before there's anything that has to be resisted "in the streets," as it were. A brilliant strategy... one that's been in the works for just shy of a few hundred years. Red shields and all that. Problem is it was never going to work. They lost due to their own nature, but they'll have a nice time at the wheel... _for a time... 2 times, and half a time._
NYC real estate market: 0
Louis Rossmann: 1
He was at 1 when he publicly posted the lady lying about square footage years ago
Hopefully soon it'll be Trump: -1 billion
daddy issues
An abundance of space on one's credit card is not the same thing as an abundance in one's bank account.
Since I read the news article about this, I've been eagerly awaiting Louis' take on the story.
I am in the SF Bay area and it's happening here as well. So bad. SF used to be one of the most fun cities in the world (and yes I have been all over the world) but now it's a ghost town of empty buildings down town (for lease!) . They would rather let it sent empty for years/decades rather then have a reasonable rent.
People care about what you do Louis Rossmann. Thank you for all the hard work you do fighting for right to repair and exposing the corruption in the tech industry. I enjoy your stories and explanations.
Clear cut, concise, poignant with comedic precision... We love you!
Just gotta say, watching you solder stuff on a magnified image of a circuit board way back when was fun. Good times.
"oh no, rich people lost money"
in other news "nature is healing"
They'll just figure out a way to get working people to pay for it like the last time the rich folks started to lose their shirts.
Most of these "rich* people have so much debt that they're technically poorer than the homeless guy who hasn't got a penny to his name. That probably includes the seller of this building. Maybe the buyer too.
The outsider "rich" people lost, the real douchebags gain by buying for pennies on the dollar.
the schadenfreude would be all well and fine if they didn't immediately find a way to get YOU, me and everyone but themselves to pay for their stupidity, greed and nearsightedness
@@iparizotto The elites propose two solutions. One is a totalitarian socialist system where the elite has control of all resources (and mismanages them horribly) through the party. The other is a totalitarian socialist system where the elite has control of all resources (and mismanages them horribly) through a few "private" conglomerates.
When people like me call for a return to a free-er market, most self-identified socialists assume I want these people bailed out and left in charge, but the actual market solution is letting them fail and stay failed. Instead governments bail them out, give them subsidies, government contracts and so on. That's looking an awful lot like the second option above to me 🤔
There's no excuse for urban decay. Allowing malls and buildings to stay empty because all the businesses in them are slowly abandoning ship or are evicted should be fixed. It's an eyesore and a waste of a good location just to collect dust.
They cannot rent property out at what the market demands.
Doing that would require a re-valuation of the company's assets based on the real rental income.
If you have a mall of 100,000 sft, and 10,000 of it is leased at a rent of $100/ sqf, the whole mall is "valued" based on that: $10MM**.
So you leave 90,000 sft empty. And accounting rules let you say the value of the 100,000 sft is based on what its worth once it is rented at existing (old, bubble -based) rates.
If you rented that 90k sft out at its real value of $5-10/sft, suddenly the building is "valued" (in this illustration) at $1.63 million.
The physical buildings of the mall is collateral on an $8MM loan. When its "value" is $10MM, this isn't a problem. When the new value is $1.63MM based on actual market rates, the company that owns the mall goes bankrupt.
Obviously this is accounting trickery. But the lender doesn't want the mall to go under, and have to write off $6.3MM, as well as take ownership of a real estate property that no one will buy. They're not property managers.
But changing the accounting rules now would not solve the problem. Using a different valuation method would eventually just be min/maxed in a completely different way.
And in the interim, lots of good, healthy companies would be destroyed because everyone built their businesses on an agreed upon set of accepted accounting principles***.
** This is not at all how valuing commercial real estate really works. However, this example simply illustrates the general concept for understanding why CREs don't rent out a store in the mall for what it can actually bring in rental income.
*** Changing valuation methodology in the middle of a crisis was one of the things that contributed to the downfall of many companies during the 2007/2008 Global Financial Crisis. Changing such accounting rules has to be a very long process. It allows companies to adjust. It must be done during a time of relative calm to avoid disasters.
After all, we have these current accounting principles today because of the GFC of 2008 and changes demanded by our elected representatives.
greedy LLCs raised every year rent 10% or more for businesses so they left malls. nothing bad in building.
@@movinon1242 what goes on in when they plan building those malls? it seems meme comdey version line goes up, endless customers, at least 1000$ per sqft income every month for sushi bar and dollar store.... thus 10mn or 100mn loan is taken and mall becomes way oversized and thus 95% of sqft is hard to get renters. I agree on your simple example logic, however it often starts when mall is built. So are malls demolished simply because "business model" failed from day0 ?
@@effexon That is the model, the mal investment is BECAUSE of 'bad' government policy - tax and investment grants, front loading & stockmarket cons.
Amazon took it all and we sat at home ordering more.
I'm in Stockholm, Sweden. Same applies here. For years I've been calling this city as dead, there are no small venues for music, although the rent is controlled it's based on making people in not so great areas pay the difference for those that live closer to the center and making no incentive to build flats to rent in the private sector, making it impossible to make back the money in less than 100 years so everything getting built is condominiums that costs about 20-50 years total income - before tax.
All the small shops goes away, same as the cafés and restaurants, getting replaced by "Bröd & Salt", "Espressohouse", "Max", "Brödernas", "HM", which all gets subsidiaries from the state and relies on gig workers. "If you prove yourself, you might just get 10 hours work time this week" they tell the young. Millennials are screwed six ways from sunday and there are no places to do recreational stuff. Forget about having a car, working on a car, painting, sculpturing or whatever, unless you're good for a sweet million dollars or so. For the rest of us plebs, the only thing remaining is the hamsterwheel of 9-5, commuting through a hellish town that make Diablo 1 look cozy to a job that is not fullfilling. Commute back in the public transport that seems to want to go full Tokyo with cattle cars and people getting pushed in to the carts since there is no room. Fall back on the sofa and die watching netflix, then start the cycle again.
I've done my part recalling, each time I set foot anywhere I don't see what is anymore, I see what was. What is now gone and replaced with "Bröd & Salt", "Espressohouse", "Max", "Brödernas", "HM" etc. There is no life. There is only people looking into their devices trying to keep the anxiety at bay at the same time they need to keep their loans paid for their shitty apartment in some suburb or the overly prices black-market 4th hand 600% marked up flat they rent from some bushwacker.
And then we have all the crime and violence. Most people want to leave. A few years ago everyone wanted to move here, now everyone that is not a foreigner or have been duped by the lie of the brights lights, big city mentality want to leave or not come here.
I want to thank Louis for his channel, it's been one of the factors that has opened my eyes and fueled my fire of leaving. Which I am now doing. Selling my small apartment to someone who for some reason wants to pay an exorbitant amount for 600 sqft in the burbs where they essentially will have nothing, whilst I will move away, into the country and have relieve myself of the stress that has given me nothing, where there may not be so many opportunities, but in reality, what opportunities does the metropolis actually grant? If you are not very well of at 30-35 it's time to face the fact that you are less likely to ever be and that you in fact are a loser in the game Urban Metropolis Game and are doomed to be the hamster in the wheel providing for those that make money off your back while giving little in return.
It's go time.
A couple of years ago one of my daughter's friends visited with her friend from Sweden. We live outside NYC and I warned them about the crime in the city. The Swedish girl replied she was used to living with crime from back home. I was confused "But don't you live in Stockholm?" Then she described what Stockholm is like these days and I was shocked. When I grew up around gritty NYC in the '70's - '80's Sweden was considered a peaceful paradise, how did Swedes let it get so bad?
@@mitchmasterfix5292 I can explain, but it's multifaceted and would take a long time. But basically the socialist government decided that they were so great and that they could fix the world, so they build the "million project" (one million apartments) creating suburban box apartments which mentally drain anyone and then they filled it up with the suck of all immigrants and refugees from cultures and nations that are so far behind that they would never get to become anything else than the lowest worker ants. So the 2nd generation immigrants saw this and figured out that they stood zero chance to get anything else than the ghetto if they didn't turn to crime. So they did. And then it just spiraled on all levels.
“You will own nothing and be happy” - Klaus Schwab
Damn. Sorry. Shits gotta change for real
@@mitchmasterfix5292 Greed, in Sweden we don't even have a minimum wage, you can pay people a total of 0 and get away with it. On top of that they will rape you with taxes, the average serf pays about 80% of their income in different form of taxes. People imagine this country as some socialist utopia but it's actually a highly capitalist country with an extreme wealth difference.
There has been a coordinated, ongoing attack against small business since at least as early as the 80's. I know this because I spent most of my working life self-employed and it just kept getting harder and harder until I quit. It began with sales taxes - which is a flat-rate revenue tax that they'll tell you doesn't cost you a thing because your customer pays it - but your customer only has so many dollars in their pocket and you are the one who has to collect the tax and do all the paperwork. It then moved onto 'goods and services' tax, which was just another revenue tax for everyone except lawyers. Insurance rates kept going up while coverage went down. Sometimes I had to pay a payroll tax (separate from 'income tax') just for hiring an employee. All of this was reflected in the cost of renting space, buying equipment, etc, etc. In the end I spent more time doing all the damn paperwork than I did earning a living.
Then there are the regulations you have to comply with which is yet another tax.
Is everywhere. Brazil too.
Hey Louis, thanks for keeping us on the loop about this. The whole NYC / Commercial real estate genre of videos you have put out has been super valuable in life in addition to repair videos and all the right to repair info. Somehow after watching your videos for years i feel like i can see through BS and smell it already from miles away in life (and tech) 2000x better than five years ago thanks to you 😂
New York Real Estate has been a game of hot potato for years, and now the music has stopped.
Jared Jushmans family is realizing that exact same thing
*I think you mean Musical Chairs but your point is well taken.*
More like pass the pineapple. Sadly the pins are out.
A fun term for it is, "last sucker holding the bag" scam.
This is just another step toward the gentrification of NYC, where commercial real estate is converted into chain stores and tiny apartments. Cheaper than building new infrastructure.
Wow I remember you searching for a new location...cant believe its been 5 years.
Co vid time
Louis bike videos flashback
Fun times.
Daaaamn, now I feel even older. I also still remember the video in which Louis and his employees took away the bat or whatever it was from some random guy who vandalized shit in NY during covid. That must have been a few years now too. Now I feel even more old... v.v
@@rossmanngroup *kopaz noise*
I first found your channel when you did your walk arounds in NYC, pointing out the dead store fronts. You basically called the great commercial real estate crash before anyone else!
As a long time electronics enthusiast, and having watching and subscribing to your channel for as long as I remember, I have always enjoyed your content. You maintained the American dream for as long as you can. You have inspired people throughout the world and showed us all how you could fix the "unfixable" devices that we have used to enhance our lives. The new generations to come will also be inspired. God bless you and your efforts.
This is not unique to NY, it's almost everywhere in NA. The rates and prices might not be the same but the formula is. In my little city of less than 300k people there are so many vacancies in the downtown that have been sitting there empty for almost a decade now, but the city is bustling the only people that still go downtown is homeless people and the suckers with office jobs. Commercial landlords not willing to reduce their lease rates, expecting to get 2014 rates (when we were at the center of a small economic boom that died long ago). These problems are fixable but nobody with the ability to wants to.
I expect the value of the assett is tied to the amount of money you can loan against it.
May even be a tax reduction scheme to leave it vacant.
We really need to burn tax law and start from scratch .
Europe as well
This has been slowly happening in sweden over the last 20 years too. Independent shops being replaced by chains, chains shutting down the locations due to not being profitable, the space being advertised as "for rent" for months if not years, and if something new opens there it's gone within another year. The town I moved to to go to uni had a mall that over the 8 years I lived in that town closed half its shops with no replacements. Certain types of shops (like, arts and crafts/hobby stores) simply did not exist in the city when I moved away.
Being a child is wanting to be spiderman
Being an adult is knowing it isnt worth living in NYC
Work with the cops=fascist
@@LongDefiant wut. Bro I feel you might have twitter brain.
Metropolis is the New York everyone wants to move to.
Gotham is the New York they wind up in.
@@LongDefiant No matter how long Im already left, its amazing to watch Tankies and Anarchists single handingly ruining the entire movement with their delulu fantasy
@@chrissi.enbyYTspidey is a fascist
I miss videos like this that were fairly regularly. Thank you for bringing back a great topic for a follow up.
As a residential landlord in a flyover state, I find it hard to believe that a legitimate real estate investor could afford to have no income for over 10 years and still survive.
They have to be laundering money, or the government has to be covering the losses.
I must be ignorant.
My guess: They are used to generate billions of paper losses as a huge tax break.
That or outright money laundering though usually money launderers have the good sense to make sure to have plenty of businesses to legitimize the operation.
@@NotMyProblem711 it's a combination of all the above and then some. 7 and 8 digit real estate purchases are fast tracked because they are the liquidity of the worlds economy so they face much less scrutiny than the poors
Easy credit was a factor. Delay the inevitable as long as possible, and there might be a chance things will happen.
They just shifted the cost. Instead of the bulding, it's now all the taxes, fines, and fees charged by NY.
Bingo - which then gets laundered and embezzled back to favorable companies via “revitalization” projects.
That was Portlands bread & butter for years…
Yep, and next it will be fines for anyone leaving NYC. Or more likely to make it a bit more legal.. exemptions from huge fees if you stay to make it too expensive to leave
If they're selling at 97% off, the taxes must be insane enough to outweigh that discount.
With that much loss, they aren't going to pay tax for the rest of their life.
I initially thought you were talking about the tax *writeoff* the owner is going to get for this sale.
In this case, it's the cost of a land lease, as the land rights were sold several years ago, and the land the building sits on is leased from the buyer.
Michael Hudson wrote article in 2001: "Where Did All the Land Go?" He found out that these commercial buildings didn't really pay any taxes. Buildings were depreciated at unrealistically high values. This allowed the owners to claim that the buildings were "wearing out" faster than the appreciation of the building. There was also some shenanigans with the way that FED calculated imputed land values. In 1993 FED stats land held by non-financial corporations had negative value: $-4 billion.
One must also consider that 97% discount might not be available for public. Instead it's the discount that's given to buddies of the bankers so that the bankers can snatch the building for cheap, just before the bank that they are working for collapses.
@@thegreenxeno9430 Do write-offs work like that? Can't they just deduct for one fiscal year?
As a New Yorker who used to go to ice shops in Brooklyn that had stages and free performances by locals. I can 100% agree with this video.
I have been managing high-rise buildings in NYC for over 36 years and I can tell you for absolutely sure that a very very large number of buildings in NYC are tied to money laundering from all over the world. Placement is the first stage or phase of money laundering. Some make mistakes and are exposed but the majority are washed. This is one reason a building can stay vacant and no rush to lower the cost and find tenants.
This one made mistakes and was exposed, Deutsche Bank Center (also known as One Columbus Circle and formerly the Time Warner Center.
Another example is
161 Maiden Lane.
5:53 "For lease is one of the most popular retail stores in Manhattan" 😄👏🏻
Real estate business is so bad they gotta start discounting. It’s over.
Only in some areas. Houses in my area are still selling quick...too many democrat refugees. They're going to sink my state like they ruined theirs :(.
Every end is a beginning for something else.
@@CGGS_0 Well, and San Fran, LA getting bad too.
@@RantTheRetort sure bud
Comercial real estate is not going well. Thats is why they( latge equity) are buying up homes across America. It has been very successful
If you can't sell it for what it's 'worth',
it's not worth that.
Um but the problem is that things are selling for what they're not worth, because of squatter whales that can price gouge through artificial vacancies.
Yet people buy houses for millions when they're barely worth thousands in reality. People buy Gucci when the prices have literally doubled on some products over 4 years. In 2020 I was looking at a pair of Gucci shoes that I liked. $400, not that bad. Now they cost around $800. And people are still fawning over premium brands even though it's not even premium. I had a pair of jeans from a discount clothes store. I had them for more than 6 years while in school. And I was running around on gravel and grass doing all sorts of activities. One hole in ONE of those two pairs. Got a pair of Levi's for weekend use. Those pants got torn through in 2 years while doing minimal physical activity. Discount pants cost $20. Levi's ON SALE cost $70.
People don't pay based on what it's actually worth. Worth is rarely based on real world quality. It's emotion based. The problem now is that EVERYTHING has to be premium for some reason. Including discount brands. They pretend like they're selling you premium clothes, just like Gucci. $1,000 for a T-Shirt? Is it made out of carbon fibre weave? Most likely just cotton.
Bingo.
residential homes are under the same type of mismanagement all over the us. it's becoming impossible for middle class america to own their own homes.
End Citizens United now and ban private equity firms from owning housing.
What's worse is it's becoming impossible to rent a home
What was luck and good fortune to have the funds to get a house 6 years ago has all but gone. Even now though, with higher valuations of surrounding properties due to these new stick-builts going up in a hurry (in which resides toxic-as-hell HOA's), that good fortune dries up and can end up pricing you out of the home you've been working to own for many, many years. Sad AF.......
It's the product of the same thing: mortgage-backed securities. There's a reason they were outlawed in 1933, and doing Bank of America's literal "bidding" to rewrite the law and permit it again is predictably leading to the exact same situation.
The solution is the same, and could have been repaired in 2008-2009, but wasn't. It can only be fixed when "assets" have crashed, and because it has been allowed to continue along with interest rates below the rate of inflation, it is only getting worse.
Louis - THANK YOU! The American Dream became the American Nightmare. You breath hope for many of us who remember the days of walking the streets of NYC as a kid, DREAMING of one day being a positive contributor to the things that made NYC great. The deceptive practices of our monetary system/policy has destroyed many dreams and many lives. I agree - screw the bankers - screw them hard! Thank you for being a voice for all of us who've been silenced, intimidated and financially wounded by their greed.
We definitely miss you guys in New York. You guys were the best and easiest Mac repair shop in existence ever in Manhattan.
When I hear a story like that about NYC, I understand maybe a little bit why people have strong feelings for it.
But... the NYC I've known my entire life is the same as the Los Angeles I grew up in that I can no longer live in. Decadent, ridiculous, unaffordable, unattainable, corrupt, and worthless.
You remember when you were able to buy parts cheaper so you can pass the savings on to your customer. I wish this was a thing more often now a day.
just wanted to say, i enjoyed watching you repair things over the last 8 ish years (how long ive been watching) and still do go back to watch the old ones. but the new content is great to so keep it up man, do what makes you enjoy creating videos because thats why we like watching!
I am so glad to see you pop up in my feed again, for whatever mysterious algorithmic reason. I'm also delighted to see the collapse of the commercial RE market, and I wish, with you, that NYC will go back to being a city of a million little shops.
3:39 Lmao 10/10 to Louis for the creativity and being that daring
Arrogance, ignorance, and greed is what is dissolving our country.😢
thanks capitalism for that
@@nicejungle you can also thank capitalism for getting us to this point we need capitalism just as much as we don't need it if capitalism gets too big it becomes a monster and destroys everything what we want to do is to avoid things getting too big you stop it where it becomes corrupt to hold it back from growing too much
@@ingamingpc1634 > "if capitalism gets too big it becomes a monster and destroys"
And it's the essence of capitalism to grow and get too big.
Also the rich make sure laws and regulations are passed so that their assets are protected despite what ever happens.
👏👏👏
Rich investors destroyed the reason why everyone wanted to be in New York and that is the culture.
seriously, there's a reason they're called "starving" artists. all the cool and interesting people in NYC were poor. once the rich kids and the real estate investors came to town they immediately ruined everything that made them want to come to the city in the first place.
BS the Socialists did.
@@tissuepaper9962 Same thing happened to San Francisco.
@@travist.7279 turns out the ultra-rich are actually kind of boring and uncool. who knew?
UBS's fire sale of 135 W 50th is complicated by the fact that the land doesn't come with it. It's owned by Safehold and leased back to the building owner.
Yes, the land sold for $290,000,000 if I remember the articla I just read correctly.
How on Earth is that practical or possible? That's like buying a car and leasing the engine but less ridiculous because you can swap the engine out. How do you move a building to a new plot of land? What does the land owner do to maintain the land to justify the lease?
I try to recall better times in my life. Then I threw up because let’s just say the better times aren’t as good as I thought. I had a normal childhood then I find out I have schizophrenia 😂 your channel is really great I love the videos about rights to repair! I ring good stories. And the bad ones.
I remember when NYC had that magical essence you speak of. The pause was hilarious lol.
I’m sure the county tax assessment will go down 97% to match, right? 💪
Nope, I'm sure they will mark it down as a distress sale and those don't count for tax assessments.
Based Zonday
Money rain.
Some get paid and others feel the pain.
That's more unlikely than chocolate rain
It is a distressed sale, so it won’t count.
And NYC operating budget ballooned ever since.
Now, collect enough of those on record and one the news transactions , there will be enough evidence to challenge their position in the courts.
So basically the Seinfeld New York years were the best New York years
*Yep. Gone but not forgotten was "the show about nothing" (Jerry's words, not mine).*
Anyone who grew up in NYC during this time misses it and Brooklyn specifically.. they destroyed Brooklyn 😢
I enjoyed your repair videos and found them useful.
I appreciate your perspective and analysis.
"The economy is booming" says Paul Krugman of the NYT while literally everything is rotting around us. Who is it booming for is the better question to ask.
The elite, bankers, politicians
that part!
Krugman has been irrelevant for decades.
@@Support_Ad_Blockeryup, he is about as ignorant as Robert Reich
@@shawnmiller4781 They both have swallowed the neoliberal lie.
Doesn't a massive chunk of the city's tax revenue come from property taxes. If the real-estate market in NYC finally gets a reality check then the city will only spiral even faster than it already is.
Guess they'll learn what it was like for Detroit.
It'll turn into the next Gary Indiana
@@gerthddyn They can learn to code.
@KW-ew7llif a whole country can collapse, so can a city
Correct
Now we have to wait for housing prices to drop by 97% so we have a chance of owning a home.
Too late. Where do you think the banks are investing now? With verbo and air bnb they are venerable hotel companies able to profit off their holdings. Its partially why rent is now $4,000/mo for a house in southern California. Its why newport beach has an average home value of 5 million. One house for 58% of that NY retail property, on average...
Homes are worthless. Investment in land
Hopefully, the city will also run out of spoiled students with wealthy parents spending $4K/month for 1BR apts near campus. Then perhaps everyone else can overpay by 1K/month less.
But remember that more rich people mean things get better right?! Until normal workers have to live in cars.
Will never happen. Social media has just made it all the more popular because every person thinks they’re an “influencer” now and view moving to a city as a lifetime dream/goal. The bright eyed, hopeful entrepreneur Louis references in this video can no longer feasibly exist in major city’s in today’s America. Every city is overrun by the exact “hip” types you’re talking about, and as soon as they move in they begin pushing their demands on everyone/getting into politics so they can rearrange the city to fit their values/ideas. They’re also more than happy to spend 2-3x market value on rent because they live like rodents and split the costs of a single apartment amongst 3-4 people.
I know this bc I speak from experience. Philly is currently being ruined by these exact types of people. What little character remains is from businesses that have been here for generations, but they are slowly dying out and being replaced by hipster cafes/microbreweries/restaurants because the city is completely overrun by the same “hip” morons that are now relocating from NYC/DC after they’ve already ruined those cities.
You're a good man Louis. Too good for the times and the world we live in
Your show is always a refreshing reality.
The price self leveled, unlike eugene's floor.
The big question I have is what happened to the wonderful lady that had hundreds of gyms?
She was worth over 200 million last I checked. Even if she lost 97% of her money She is worth many, many multiples of me And she's set for life.
Fuck repair. I should have opened a gym.
@@rossmanngroup unreal.
I was thinking exactly the same thing. Can't have too many gyms, right?
@@rossmanngroup im sure NYS will take the remainder 3% of her wealth with bs code violations that you were never in violation in
@@rossmanngroup Tammy Faye Bakker ?
@@rossmanngroup Gyms are falling out of favour because of all the misandry.
I was raised on a farm in WA state and lived rural until I was 18 and enlisted in the Army in 1980.
I went through NYC and spent two days around late '81 and absolutely hated it. SOOOO MANY PEOPLE and so much garbage. And every Bodega I went into seemed ancient and filthy.
I can't understand how anyone actually ENJOYS living in any large city but especially NYC
When every business has bars on the windows and doors, its not a place for me.
*Agreed. Late 60s my Dad passed thru NYC on a couple of overseas deployments. Said it was a shithole, better to stay near JFK on LI. 2006 I did much the same deployments. Even worse. Will never return there.*
I dont get a point for these comments Louis actually loved NYC yall always hated it
Same here. Different back story, but same opinion. I visited NYC once. Loud, crowded, filthy, and overpriced. I'll never go back.
Thx Louis, watching you work through this has greatly helped me work through impossible circumstances myself.
I like your repair videos. Highly informative and educational with a bit of fun commentary.
97% cheaper aka almost affordable for the average buyer
Bro anybody in NYC that ain't gang, politician, or a trust fund baby can't afford NYC. The blue collars of NYC are basically the peasants of the community, even though they do most of the work.
Just awaiting it drop to 99.9999
There's no way the actual value of that building is $8.5 million. It's a 23-story, 925,000-square-foot building. Whoever bought it, won the lottery.
@@wedding_photography probably more drops incoming so get ready to geta better deal XD
Purchase price just a drop in the bucket against the taxes and fees demanded by the city. Plus security, insurance, maintenance, utilities, etc. The new owner could lose money. At least if they assign rents based on the reset price, it will put pressire on other rents - maybe get the snowball rolling.
IIRC, these “97% off” skyscrapers were only for the price of the building itself and did not include the cost of the land underneath the building (which the original purchase price included). They sold the land separately and now the new buyers owe a huge land lease
They likely still took a huge loss, but not that egregious
So its still a scam
it breaks my heart seeing you echo my sentiments of corruption overtaking the chance for anyone to attempt living out their dreams, but i’m grateful someone with a platform your size is speaking up about it. the same thing is occurring in paris, london, manchester, milan, etc.
I love how you always start with such a nice genuine greeting.
Thank you very much. I really appreciate that. I also love your username.
I truly enjoyed those repair videos, but also enjoy the new "Angry Louis" direction. Keep up the great content! 😄
I still think that raising the property tax rate slowly on the owners for every month the space is vacant is the best way to incentivize these companies to lower their rent to an amount that makes sense. Bleed them out faster while raising funds for the government.
Force banks to value it at however much rent they actually take in, recalculated annually. Will be leased out *real* quick.
*Raise funds for NYC Gov't? They cannot responsibly manage the Billions now received annually. F!;k'em.*
Unfortunately, this is the natural consequences of being greedy
More like a natural consequence of capitalism
Thanks Captain Overgeneralization@@qwerty6928
@@qwerty6928 capitalism is a tool. It can be good or bad, depending on how you use it. Nothing positive about greed.
@@jamescarter8662No such thing as "good" capitalism. It's a predatory system that serves white people and their elites and harms Black and Brown people.
@@qwerty6928 What we have right now is NOT capitalism. It's a banker-run oligarchy.
I doubt new york will ever return to a place of opportunity. This whole country is increasingly no longer a place of opportunity, and upwards mobility is the lowest it's been in ages. The greed of our current overlords is all consuming and will not stop until they take everything down with them.
You'll own nothing and you'll be happy, I see no reversal of this. Its by design
The solution is to remove the overlord class
the world has moved on, NYC had its day. past tense.
I have been a long time subscriber. I started a repair business because of you. Thanks for all you do Louis. New York is getting worse. Hope to visit your business in Texas soon
I loved those real estate videos. that's when I first discovered you!! and then I stuck around bc I loved your ethics and content. I keep meaning to bring my computer over to your store since we both live in Austin! appreciate all you do.
Add money laundering to the formula that made possible those ridiculous prices .
Never underestimate what a good laundry service can do for u .
You are spot on when you say there is an incentive for buildings to be vacant. It's a perfect example of how corrupt the government has become. The fact that there is more money in a business not making any money is beyond the pale ridiculous!
how does that translate as "government" to you? It's rich scumbags. Individuals and individual entities.
@@hyena280 Naw... you have already said you want to remain clueless. You cannot be taught. But I will give you a hint.
In simple terms. There is more profit in the building sitting empty because owner can get a tax break for that. Who provides tax breaks? Government. Also if you listen to Louis, he also explains why they can't rent out for less because that will cause value to drop leading to financial consequences for any banks backing the financing on the property... which are regulated by... "gasp"... government.
This is hardly scratching the surface but in a round about way... YOU are paying for the rich people to have overpriced assets to claim as part of their wealth.
And because YOU wish to remain ignorant, you deserve to be oppressed like a simp.
That's Hollywood's MO for many years.
Very few films make a "profit", despite how much they gross.
Everyone seems to have forgotten the most fundamental truth when it comes to value. Something is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it
Louis, you're such an amazing person. I really appreciate your attitude and your relationship to life and everything. Thanks for being you.
55 square feet per technician is crazy! Call centers typically allocate 80 to 150 square feet per employee. Each technician's workstation should have around 100 to 150 square feet for the bench, tools, and move around space. Add an another 50 to 100 square feet per technician for storage of parts and tools
A call center needs that much space per employee? The ones I've seen, they got a cubicle. And of course the break room, bathrooms and whatever but no where close to 80 square feet of space. Unless you can overlap those specific areas to count...
8 million € was a very extravagant mansion with huuuuuge gardens and pools around it in france or italy. 8 MILLION was the price for a thing that only actors could afford. How is a building in NYC 8 million AFTER a price crash???
8 million is nothing for huge however many story building. It is New York and not some random countryside in france and italy - which were always low economy regions compared to literally "the City on planet earth" (i hate ny but that is true). The m^2 of the land alone is probably 8 million.
8 million in paris is also nothing.
plus you have to include inflation which adds a lot.
Dunno but on the cote d'azur, you definitely won't get your described mansion for 8 million either nowadays
@@MHWGamer yes, NOWADAYS 8 million is nothing
@@Soapy-chan so you agree that 8mil for that building after the price crash is really nothing considering the facts around it?
@@MHWGamer have you read my original comment and comprehended it?
@@Soapy-chan you tell me.
You last sentence is literally "how is a building 8mil AFTER a price crash" which I understand as it should be lower, also added by your example of what you've got for 8mil back then.
-> and you agreed with me in the follow up that 8mil for that building is nothing.
So where are you at? Either your last sentence was meant differently somehow or you just wanted to point out about inflation (which I still can't rhyme sense in that sentence)
People think that online businesses are the reason why retail is dieing, but from my point of view thats not the reason really. I agree with you that is actually way more enjoyable experience walking around town and meeting people and checking in their goods and services live with your own eyes, touch with your own hands, talk about the products and services, have an experience out with your friends, family, kids and so on. You get nothing of that experience online, just click a few buttons and then sit on your couch watching TV until the package arrives, say hello and goodbye to the mailman....
Retail wouldnt have to be dieing if prices for rents and leases had not skyrocketed to the moon... Now imagine that thise building that they bought at a 97% discount, they could now rent out space for businesses extremely cheap which in turn means they actually can compete with online prizes and still make a good profit on their business, and people have a reason again to get out of their shoebox of an overpriced apartment, and get moving in the real world and experience things!!! Imagine that... Holy shit i cant say enough how i miss those times.
Eh, I like browsing shops full of stuff I want. What I don't like is running around town wasting time trying to find anyone who has the item I'm after.
Online shopping lets me find what I want quickly and I don't even have to spend the time to go to the shop to get it. I can get on with my life. I can't see going back to physical shopping ever except for groceries.
And for very similar reasons, shopping malls in Europe are still mostly successful.
@@nicholasvinen That sounds very depressing to always be in a rush somewhere, i think its quite nice to roam around with my kids in town and just go random places and check random stuff, i see it as quality time rather than a waste of time. The biggest problem is now the finances, inflation murdered purchasing power so cant really do this alot anymore because theres no money to stop at some store or restaurant or a cafe. Its sad really as a social person
Its not so simple. One store in the middle of nowhere surrounded by "for sale" signs wont do anything.
For people to go around and do shopping you will need multiple stores in small area, so you wont end up with 90% commute 10% browse situation.
You also need the stores to be diversified and not 10 stores with the exact same products.
That's why Europe shopping malls have a certain style to them:
You have a large central store selling cheap food that everyone uses for their weekly grocery's that brings people into the place,
then you have a food section that allows them to eat dinner and stay in the mall longer,
and finally you have the small stores with more specialized products that give you access to huge variate of products (something for everyone).
You may like those things, but you are in the minority. Everyone else would rather sit at home and wait for the delivery truck. In person retail is dying out, that's just the way it is now. Retail sales in general haven't stopped, they've just moved away from brick and mortar to the virtual.
It’s the same thing here. Someone got in these people’s ears and it ends up with a 50% retail vacant and dead neighborhoods while landlords insist on an inflated “market rate” because they’d rather have a huge tax write off than charge a fair rate. They would rather have empty units and a couple of stressed out small business people barely scraping by and losing their savings than 6 full units of happy, successful businesses. I don’t get it.
What's not to get. Its just corruption.
Big companies don't want competition, because with competition capitalism would start working again and they will be forced to reduce prices or increase quality of products.
So they use their contacts to make sure small businesses never happen
Louis tackles this at about the 4-minute mark in the vid. They can’t reduce the rent because the bank they owe money to will mark down the property’s value.
Louis, I feel you. Truly appreciate this heartfelt video. My favorite of all of yours that I've seen so far. Bravo, brother! 👍🏼
I'm so glad you popped up in my feed! It's so good to see your face again😊
What about a local authority rule; "if your building is empty for more than a year they will seize it, rent it out for whatever anyone is will to pay in an auction and hand the money over to the owners minus fees"?
@@SioxerNikita I'd still say a year of "trying to rent" is enough time to indicate the price, but I also realise its not that easy to make regulation do what you want it to do. We need sellers to respond to supply and demand. This corruption of pretending to retain the value of a building is distorting the free market, its rife in bank lending too. Banks were allowed to keep trading when they were insolvent. Gov't held back regulation and didn't encourage house building to respond to high prices. Now prices have nearly got to those value, meanwhile noone can afford a house.
This would be good to normalize the market.
because the local authorities are being paid by the property tax and tanking the price tanks the taxes
@@SioxerNikita Was gonna say, a year is nothing in the retail/commercial space (especially if there's something like the GFC). 3 years is more appropriate.
Not only that, but how is "rented" defined? Because if there's a negotiation going on and the 1 year mark passes then what happens? And what's to stop a landlord from having someone "in negotiations" for 10 years because no potential tenants will meet their insane asking price?
They can't just seize people's property without compensation, that's unconstitutional in the united states. If NYC had to pay all of the owners of these buildings millions of dollars, they would go bankrupt before they even got through one percent of them.
This property racket is worldwide. Our town is a ruin here in Scotland, greedy landlords!!! They want Edinburgh and Glasgow main street prices for a rust belt town with less than 80,000 pop in central Scotland
It's sad. I'm old enough to remember before the 1990s when landlords weren't greedy.
I wonder if large banks and investment firms (like Blackrock) bought up a lot of NY property which inflated in price, because it was NYC property, then they would leverage that paper value to buy up property outside of NY which inflated property around the country. Self licking ice cream cone. Some people made lots of money, and when the cards come down...they jump on their yachts and wait for things to burn (and start a new company to buy everything up cheap and rebuild). Tin hat mode engaged!
If you thought of it you can rest assured they were way ahead of you.
@@vincei4252 I agree there are some smarter and better connected people out there than I. That's why I don't have a yacht!
always entertaining, i miss your walks. I grew up in NYC, lived in NYC and worked there. You are so correct in your assessment. It is no life for people who want to get ahead. It is broken and just getting worse. Never thought "Escape from New York" would become a reality.
I think every small business owner has their version of the story of how they started their first business. Your story was just as I would have expected. I enjoyed hearing it.
Am I allowed to say that I do not feel any sympathy for those that kept up this deception for years / decades ?
I am new to commenting on videos here and new to FUTO, yet I was here quietly on and off since the old days. I actually miss the repair videos, but understand and respect the evolution of this channel. The universe has called Louis to greater things - to be a much needed voice in this clusterf#@k of a problem we have in the realm of consumer rights. The defense of liberty is important. Our founding fathers fought and died over this. So did many others. Thank you, Louis for having the balls to take on this fight.
As for geography, as a life-long resident of California, I share the same angst that many in NY like Louis feel. The very same politics have run CA and NY into the ground.
So many of us over here talk about leaving (often to Texas) but never follow through. I have a few friends that actually did pack up and leave. Much respect and love to them. I admire Louis for not staying. NY lost a tremendously valuable business and social presence in Louis' exodus. Absolute f#@ktards, they are to have driven him to leave as he did. It's their loss, and it's a significant one.
I was delighted and impressed to learn that Elon is leaving California. I am actually going to leave myself after I finish grad school. It's going to be a challenge to relocate 3 domestic and 5 feral cats, but I have an idea as to how to do it.
Me and my camp over here have been captivated by two things recently, 1. The painting behind Louis. We thought at first that it was some sort of smart home panel/display, because why would you mount a picture/painting below a light switch? Then it became apparent that this was indeed a painting and clearly one that has value and its placement is of specific intention. 2. The window-like black-framed "picture" on the wall adjacent to the stairs. I thought this was a picture at first, but it seems too bright to be a picture. It looks like a window that has some nice wrought iron on the outside. However, there doesn't appear to be any window casing or window molding that is typical of windows. We are mystified over here moreso over this curious "window" than the painting, but the painting is a curiousity too. Louis probably mentioned it but I missed it.
My wife and I travel a lot for work, we get a client for 6 months or a year, fill up our suitcases and move to the clients city, do our job and then leave at the end of the contract. Weve lived in New York City for a few years in total, but not in a row. We were there in 96, 02, and 23.
Holy cow how that city has changed.
It was heartbreaking in 02 for obvious reasons. It was moreso in 23. We always stayed in the upper east side, different places, but the same general neighborhood. The feeling in 23 was like the spirit of the city was broken, everyone seemed really depressed. I didnt realize why there were so many closed businesses. Thanks for explaining. I hope thing turn around, nyc is such a unique part of the US that I am glad to get to spend time in.
Manhattan was a nightmare of traffic in 2013 with parking that ran 50 bucks on the average and a toll to get anywhere. If thats freedom, it can rot.
I do not ❤ NY. Boston is way better. Similar vibes but way better enviornment.
Been watching your videos for ever and ever and ever it seems, but this is honestly probably your best video yet. It’s great to hear the real talk.
This one hit hard. Appreciate you louis. Your heart burns bright and says the thing many of us want to say