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Comment by macspoofing | Hacker News Reader

They own the building/storefront (i.e. no lease and no mortgage)? If you're a retail outlet and you own the property outright, you can weather almost any storm.

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Until property taxes eventually push them out as it has done in some urban communities. Ownership is huge but prices will always rise so I think it's hard to ever let their guard down.

Property taxes will eventually get you, but if the bookstore owns the building its in, it will (almost by definition) be able to sell for millions and move elsewhere, if it wants to.

Usually (in my experience) it survives until the owner retires or dies, and then disappears.

You pay the property taxes either way. It's not like the landlord can just make them go away, they just get hidden in the rent hikes.

My family operated a jewelry store this way for about 90 years.

“Brick Shithouse” was their term for it.

“An article built more robustly than its function requires; implies an element of indestructability.”

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/brick_shithouse#:~:text=Nou...

I worked at a used bookstore for many years, and this is what the owner told me how he managed to stay in business for more than 40 years in the same building. Especially since moving all your stock to a new location if you rent is a big pain.

It can often be the line between success and failure; commercial rents are such a major portion of a service business's expense.

Also, the company is privately owned or the owner is also a majority stakeholder. Otherwise owning the building is a liability that venture capital types will exploit to pay themselves back for the expenses of taking over your company.

Surely you mean an asset, not a liability?

Not if you are trying to avoid being bought out. Those assets are just something the VC firm will leverage to buy out your company. Basically telling their lenders that you own X amount of real estate worth $Y, so use it as collateral on the loan they make to take over your company. Those assets then get sold to pay off the loan and the stores get to pay rent to some landlord.

I’ve heard this in several places. It’s really key for longevity.

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