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And they’re often owned by funds that are measured in the billions. A parking lot in New York covers for a bunch of empty middle America storefronts, as long as the valuation works out on paper.

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It seems that approach is a way to generate losses without actually losing the titles. These losses are needed to offset incomes elsewhere thus not paying taxes on profits.

Investment fund's commodity is value - the rest are just tools to optimize the value.

In aggregate, the owners of these properties are investing to earn a return. Losses only lead to "not paying taxes on profits" if there are no profits. The overall portfolio has to be earning a risk-appropriate return or investors will go elsewhere.

But if there are losses there are no profits. I am with SoftTalker on this one. I figure there are things I do not know that explains how this keeps happening even though my simplistic knowledge thinks it is not sustainable.

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