OPINION:
Proactive government and business leaders must confront the hidden cause of “American unaffordability,” inflation and, ultimately, voter frustration: the high costs of owning and leasing commercial real estate.
Every essential good or service — food, clothing, housing, energy, health care, your paycheck — flows through commercial buildings, even in today’s digital economy.
The problem is that freshly remodeled or newly built shopping centers, industrial warehouses, apartment buildings, medical facilities, hotels, restaurants, gas stations, etc., no longer “pencil out at the bank.”
Across 3,000 American counties, commercial real estate affordability is collapsing because landlords and tenants are pummeled by unsustainable, government-born property taxes, interest rates, zoning and permitting delays, insurance premiums and topographical infrastructure labor — ultimately increasing consumer prices everywhere.
Affordability, defined, is the relationship between essential costs and annual incomes, regardless of your skin, credit card or political party’s color.
When commercial property costs escalate faster than household incomes, results are predictable: higher prices, escalating rents and exacerbated American unaffordability. These pressures fall hardest on low-density towns and rural counties that cannot afford sewer-water-power grid expansions enabling new and better commercial and residential developments.
At city-county entitlement levels, commercial renovation and ground-up projects are expensive, time-consuming political nightmares.
Yet all “Clinton News Networks” still focus on divisive political theater and endless Trump resistance.
Wake up, America! It’s not “the price of eggs” but rather the insanely high overhead that grocery stores, distribution warehouses, hotels and restaurants must pay as commercial landlords and tenants in the first place.
“American affordability” requires dramatic reductions in commercial property taxes, interest rates, impact fees, insurance costs — and especially the runaway expenses of “shovel-ready dirt.”
If the Trump administration expects to lower prices and win 2026 midterms, improving commercial real estate affordability must become local, state and national priorities.
BARON CHRISTOPHER HANSON
Palm Beach, Florida
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