Why don’t High Street Landlords cut their rent?

[RhubarbIsEvil]

Sky News has a feature about the current lacklustre Australian economy. Here’s a snippet: Their struggle partly reflects specific factors with which British retailers will be familiar, most notably a refusal on the part of landlords to cut store rents, despite obviously weakening trading conditions.

I don’t get it. Surely it’s better all round for a busy High Street which pays less rent, rather than empty shops which pay no rent?

It’s the same with Council business rates. Lot of shop keepers say that they are crippling.

Am I being thick? Why don’t landlords make it easier for for shops to stay open? Surely if they were that greedy and money grabbing then they’d grab the money rather than price themselves out of business?

Not a journo. Not a feature writer. Just fed up with seeing people struggling to make their businesses work and receiving no help.

The buildings are valued according to future rents they can receive.

Better to have one year vacant, and then the full (say) £100k than reduce to £50k to get a tenant.

Doing so would halve the value of the building.

These 'landlords' are, more often than not, pension funds, so they look to the longer term.

We had this where I used to live. Properties on the high street had been bought by investors from who knows where, most borrow money and if they reduce the rents it reduces the value of the property so the lenders get twitchy over the value to amount borrowed.

At least I think that is how it works

Thank you for your answers. I still feel that it’s a short term view to a long term problem (even if the owners claim that they are looking to the long term).

Have they not heard of Amazon???