Thursday, April 26, 2007

Free Rent? Was Milton Friedman Wrong?

What does a state's largest commercial landlord do when it owns 20 million square feet of office space, and the state's largest city has an office vacancy rate of 30%? Michigan’s largest commercial landlord, Farbman Group, is offering free space as an incentive to attract business into the economically challenged state.

From today's Detroit News, "In another sign of the region's tough economy, the largest commercial landlord in Michigan is offering free rent to startup companies and firms new to the state." Well, actually "rent would be free, for an undetermined amount of time, but the companies must pay for utilities and other operating costs."

Maybe there is such a thing as free lunch?

1 Comments:

At 4/27/2007 6:57 PM, Blogger skh.pcola said...

I hear advertisements for Michigan on the AM radio everyday here in the panhandle of Florida. Why Michigan thinks that they can entice people to move there from here is a mystery. Even free rent isn't impetus enough to lure me into the maws of the wrecking machine that is Michigan's regulatory and taxing bureaucracy.

 

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