There are a lot of reasons that they stand empty.
One very good reason is that tenants were moved out to make way for renovations say around 2019/20.
Everything then stopped due to COVID. This resulted in various things. Lack of manpower to start or restart works, added to that the cost of material’s vastly increased.
That means refinancing which takes time as you have to build up your reserves etc.
Landlords will not leave a property empty if they can make enough money to justify the various expenses that come up.
An old property if refurbished has to meet the latest regulations and that can cost a bomb.
It’s the mix of expenses that prevents work being done even just working on one building and having to leave another till the first one completed.
As for empty office buildings or shops. There are a few here in Harrogate empty, Debenhams being one and it’s probably going to be flats as has the Littlewoods, River Island building on the towns Main Street. The WFH adds huge problems to shopping centres etc.
Greatly reduced footfall in shops, fewer people going into Cafe’s etc. therefore a decline which can only get worse.
In France we saw the rapid decline of one big town because a retail group of store opened on the outskirts.
Over about 5 years the old town centre sort of died reducing to about a third of is size in that time.
If you take away one of a farmers fields you run the danger of making the whole farm unviable. Field rotation very very important.
I could go on But!
Allan C.
