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- Hacker News
- I'll never miss an opportunity to promote this TED talk from James Kunstler[1]. It's a real pleasure to see a skilled hater take a vile trend to task and he does so with gusto. It's from 2004 and really feels like it, but the central points remain just as true today.
[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_the_ghastly_...
by aeturnum - So Vanguard owns one-eighth of ADC, an REIT whose stock price has declined 2.65% in the last 5 years. Surely there is space in the market for a smaller, leaner, possibly privately-owned REIT whose values more closely align with 2026 values and will one day be able to eat ADC's lunch.by schnevets
- only a 2.65% decline in a commercial real estate REIT is probably beating the marketby mixdup
- I think the tax incentives of an REIT pretty much mandate it be publicly traded?by sidewndr46
- Commercial real estate got walloped by covid and the damage is still making its way through the system. A 2.65% decline in the last 5 years is probably one of the better performers in the sector.by Analemma_
- CRE is a tough market right now, but you would think that a little bit of minimal creativity and effort could make an impact. I get annoyed with the overreliance on murals to provide faux authenticity, but even that is usually better than a bland box.by iamnothere
- Not to be a contrarian but that vanilla look is what creates traction or commerce. When we pull into a 7-Eleven weather in Seattle or Florida people want the same experience and the same expectations. And as such with end with liminal space. A sad space where the coffee and the Slim-Jim are the same. The familiarity of nowhere or anywhere America.by javier_e06
- I think abstracted a bit more, this is just humanity in general, and isn’t really an America only thing. Humans like and gravitate toward homogeneity. Same is comfortable, same is safe. The more I travel and see big cities around the world, the more I recognize how closely related they are to major US cities. Like sure, there’s nuanced differences, and you can experience a wide variety of cultures and history. Ultimately though, they all have same metropolitan features, issues, positives, and characteristics.
It’s really the small villages and grass roots communities that shine with heritage, tradition, and unique experiences. Unique of course when compared against one another, but even more homogeneous within their own borders.
by snohobro - 7-11's, which I frequent often, need a slightly higher food quality selection to appease affluents like me, but as far as how they look, that's what a 7-11 looks like! It's what I look for when I'm driving, on "stroads" / highways, and am looking for an exactly predictable experience, one which is low-key, inexpensive, and does not imply a formal dress code. I'd never want a 7-11 to look like a brownstone in the west village, that would imply an entirely different kind of business establishment.by zzzeek
- This does seem like a fair criticism, the 7-11 style seems fine to me. (The food selection is much better in Japanese 7-11s, though.) When I see them they are usually in better shape than other nearby stations.
Small touches such as landscaping can really make a difference. For example, 7-11s at the beach often seem to put in a little more effort, although I don’t know if that’s the store or the landlord.
by iamnothere - I want to see what the author considers a nice 7-11 for contrast, because it seems normal to me? Could be more walkable of course but I'm not sure that's on the REIT. They didn't lay out the roads or anything.
The wood paneling and nice front lights actually seem like an improvement over local 7-11s if anything.
by nemomarx - Yeah, I was thinking the same — this one looks nicer than the ones near me.by sroussey
- By that logic, I also own a microscopic share in all sorts of businesses, many of which have their own sadness or disinterest.
Is there anything that makes real-estate significantly different, beyond how the pathos can be more-easily photographed?
In other words, I expect the (legitimate) issues raised in the article have close analogues in legal/financial/incentive problems for other forms of investment.
> The shortcoming of such analyses is that they make it difficult to capture the value that would accrue to a project that created a neighborhood.
Sounds like an opportunity for experts in the field to develop and sell a good kind of analysis!
Though point-taken: It'd still be hard to attract cautious investors until something is perceived as "proven".
by Terr_ - No, this is just poor management. Japanese 7-11s are ran better because of better culture, products and management. It's not magic.by HawtAds
- I tend to agree with you
- I'm certainly a fan of Japanese products. They are high-quality, etc. And everything was clean and orderly and amazing as a short-term visitor over 20 years ago. I would not be quick to say it is a better culture though, I suspect some negative are quite hidden, and lurking underneath the cultural norms. Again, as an outsider, I have lots of positive thoughts about Japanese culture.by loco5niner
- They have a different culture and values, the US’s strengths lie in individualism and the character of the individuals that live here, and that’s both good and bad. But it’s entirely unsurprising that when responsibility and ownership is sharded up into trillions of tiny pieces and diffused that the outcome is awful.by etdznots
- In systems thinking, this would be called "intrinsic responsibility" (or lack thereof).
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/12139955-intrinsic-responsi...> Intrinsic responsibility” means that the system is designed to send feedback about the consequences of decision making directly and quickly and compellingly to the decision makers. Because the pilot of a plane rides in the front of the plane, that pilot is intrinsically responsible. He or she will experience directly the consequences of his or her decisions.by Ozzie_osman - How does that work, though? In the early days, pilots were daredevils. It doesn’t seem like aviation became safer because pilots took risks?
Workspace safety didn’t improve by blaming the workers, even though they bore the risk.
by skybrian - The article spends a lot of time describing problems that I would see as a result of car centricity and land use patterns, but it just fails to make a point on why it’s a problem caused by REITs.
You can easily go to NYC and find entire neighborhoods owned by large absentee landlords and yet are still walkable and desirable to live in. Yes perhaps regulations and tax laws favor large firms, but in the end zoning laws can easily require those large firms to build desirable neighborhoods.
by kccqzy - > You can easily go to NYC and find entire neighborhoods owned by large absentee landlords and yet are still walkable and desirable to live in.
Sure, because they were largely built a hundred years ago, and parceled into lots a hundred more before that, and because NYC remains uniquely friendly to continued mixed-use development today.
by gipp - This was my home gas station for 4 years so I may be biased, but it is fine. Symptomatic of a deeper car-centric problem, sure.by sodality2
- I have fond high school memories at gas stationsby yowayb
- I think part of the reason the US doesn't feel like the US anymore is that ownership of properties is no longer Bob who dreamed of some day opening a Pizza shop on Main st. It's all corporate now, all the way down.
- > I think part of the reason the US doesn't feel like the US anymore
I guess we can debate if that isn't what the US is about, but regardless, it is depressing.
Traveling around the US, the most notable thing is how everything is the same. It is so horrible. No matter where you go, it's the same chain stores, often in the same arrangement and layout. If you get dropped blindly in most towns in the US, there is no way to tell any difference, it's all cookie cutter identical.
Occasionally you run into town that have character and a unique style. Those are the treasures of the US. But I'm sure soon enough those will also be paved over with the same fast foods and chain stores to comply with being identical.
by jjav - Actually, 7-11 is a shrewd negotiator and will not invest anything over fixing something broken, and the landlord is not in charge here as these are all triple net. So it doesn’t matter who owns the land. But, yes, the corp running that business is thousands of miles away.
But the real issue here a that people stop at a 7-Eleven where if the same building in same condition said Bobs Convenience Store, they would not. We learned that decades ago.
by sroussey - Yup. Consolidation of the markets is ultimately what's destroyed small businesses. It's currently working on the likes of dentists and vets.
The US has devolved to the point where only someone with a large amount of wealth can start and run a business. You can't open up a small hardware shop anymore because no bank will give that loan and no supplier will give you the same wholesale prices they give to the likes of Home Depot or Lowes or heck even Walmart.
At every level in the supply distribution system we've seen consolidation and ultimately locking out of competition.
For example, here's why independent pharmacists have been going out of business [1]. We need new Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt anti-trust breakups to make capitalism work again. Capitalism can't work without a diverse competitive market.
by cogman10 - In the past 7-Eleven was unique in the franchise world where you could make a comfortable living owning a single store and that was the major ownership model. McDonalds and other options at the time really depended on a multi-store ownership model. Corporate 7-Eleven (Southland Corp technically) moved away from this single store model in the mid to late 90's, instead preferring single, larger corporations in a region, owning 10+ stores over a single store owner. They made this happen over a 20 year span by changing the contracts franchisees sign and must to re-sign every x years. Every contract renewal drastically reduced the single store income and made it much harder for single store owners to make a living. Corporate also started preferring to give new stores to existing, large scale franchises over new store owners which changes the initial capital needed for a store by over 10x as with an existing store you will have to pay the rights from the previous franchisee instead of just the corporate.
My parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles all own or have owned 7-Eleven stores and have since the 80's. I've worked there, been to their conferences, and still get to hear about them at all family gatherings :)
by bradly - I don't know if it's causative, but that seems to coincide with the move from Southland Corp to being run by the Japanese parent Seven & i Holdings.by JackFr
- McDonalds was the same early on, but evolved into a real-estate operation that also sells hamburgers.
Last I knew (this was the 1990s) there were still a few single-store franchisees but most franchisees owned at least half a dozen stores in a market. I also think the investment required to buy a franchise is vastly larger than it was in the beginning. It's really only affordable to owners who can leverage the income they are making from the stores they already own.
AFAIK they do still require owners to be operators. You can't own a McDonalds franchise passively. But I'm not sure that's still the case.
by SoftTalker