I recently visited a lawyer who does occasional work for me. His office is in a high-rise office building on Lake Merritt in Oakland. When I last visited him 4 years ago, the building was fully occupied. This time, I felt like I was walking through a ghost town. There was no one in the halls or in the elevators. I could hear the echo of my footsteps as I walked through the halls. The building is over 80% vacant even though it is well-maintained, and the offices have wonderful views.
Right now, over 1/3 of all the office space in downtown Oakland is vacant. Things are just as bad in San Francisco. Some iconic office buildings in San Francisco are now completely vacant. This isn’t just happening here. This is happening in big cities all over the U.S. Many of the people who moved from office jobs to remote work at the start of Covid never returned. Over the next 2 years, almost $2 trillion in commercial real estate loans will come due, more than in any previous 2-year period in American history. When these loans come due, they will have to be refinanced at interest rates that are much higher than they were 2 or 3 years ago. What interest rate will lenders demand on an office building that is 50% vacant – if they are willing to lend money at all?
Retail space. And what happens when the mortgages come due on the tens of thousands of vacant stores and shopping centers all over the U.S.? In April, Foot Locker announced that they are closing 525 stores. Bed, Bath, and Beyond announced they are closing all 900 of their stores. Tuesday Morning announced they will close all 500 of their stores. That’s almost 2,000 store closings in just 1 month and from just 3 retail chains!
Apartments or Maybe Pickleball? Desperation has led to many to consider simplistic, harebrained ideas. Politicians in San Francisco, New York, and other cities are saying that the solution to the empty office building and retail store glut is to turn them into apartments. I don’t think they don’t understand what is involved in doing that. It is very difficult and expensive to convert buildings that don’t have plumbing, ventilation, or wiring for kitchens or bathrooms into apartments. Some politicians in San Francisco are now talking about converting empty stores into pickleball courts, beginning with the recently closed Nordstrom stores in downtown San Francisco. Again, they don’t seem to understand what’s involved in doing that. Pickleball courts require a lot of space and 20-foot high ceilings. How many stores or offices have 20-foot high ceilings? I think a commercial real estate disaster is looming, and I don’t see how it can be avoided.
CALLING ME ON THE TELEPHONE.
Before I answer my phone, I check my Caller I.D. screen first. If my Caller I.D. does not identify the caller or says that the call is from ‘Wireless Caller’, ‘Private Caller’, ‘Unknown’, ‘Blocked Number’, ‘Unavailable’, ‘Toll Free Number’, ‘Out of Area’, etc.; I will not answer the call. If you are calling me from a telephone that does not identify you, just leave a message on my voicemail. Do not hang up and call me back later. That won’t do any good. I check my messages frequently, and I will reply to legitimate voicemail messages. I am sorry if this seems rude, but I get a lot of robocalls and calls from scammers, and this is the only way I can control the problem. You should do the same thing that I do about this. When you answer a robocall, you are telling the computer that called you that your phone number is active and that you answer robocalls. Doing that just gets your name put on the sucker lists that crooks sell to other crooks.
BEWARE OF CALLER I.D. SPOOFING.
Caller I.D. spoofing is not as funny as the name sounds. It is the practice of deliberately falsifying a caller’s identity and/or phone number in order to disguise his true identity from the person who is receiving the call. It is a common method of scamming people, and it is easy to do. I got a caller I.D. spoof call a couple of years ago. My Caller I.D. said the call was from ‘Superior Court.’ A recorded message said that I failed to show up for jury duty and unless I paid a $1,000 fine within 24 hours, a bench warrant would be issued for my arrest – and this fine could only be paid with Walmart gift cards!
THE GRANDPARENT SCAM.
I also once got a ‘grandparent scam’ phone call. My phone rang. My Caller I.D. said the call was from: ‘Sheriff’s Office.’ The caller said he was the sheriff of Guntown, Mississippi. This ‘sheriff’ said that my grandson was in jail, arrested for possession of marijuana and that unless I paid a fine of $2,000 immediately, he would be sent to the state prison. The ‘sheriff’ said that I had to pay this fine with Bitcoin. I could hear a young man’s voice in the background pleading with me to pay the fine and not let his parents find out about this. I thought about telling this so-called ‘sheriff’ that I had just seen the episode of The Simpsons in which Grandpa Simpson fell for a grandparent scam just like this one! I also thought about telling this ‘sheriff’ that his fake southern accent was just awful and that my fake southern accent was a lot better than his – but I didn’t.
P.S. – There really is a city in Mississippi named Guntown. I checked that out online, and they have a sheriff and a jail; however, since I have no grandchildren, I doubt that my grandson is in the Guntown jail.
P.P.S. – Southern states all used to have very harsh penalties for possession of marijuana, but now, it’s a hodge-podge. In Mississippi, the penalty for possession of a small quantity of marijuana is a $100 fine with no jail time. In Florida, the same offense can get you 5 years in prison, a $5,000 fine, plus loss of your driver’s license and government job. Plus, as a convicted felon in Florida, you will also lose the right to vote until you pay the fine.
Florida’s Disenfranchisement Law. In 2018, voters in Florida voted to repeal the state’s felony disenfranchisement law, but politicians found a loophole that allows them to continue to prohibit an astonishing 1.5 million people in Florida from voting, including 24% of all black adults in the state. Think about it – nearly 1 in 4 black adults in Florida are prohibited from voting because of a law that the voters thought they repealed 5 years ago. (Yes, I know that I trash Florida politicians quite often, but they do some really terrible stuff there.)
THE GRANDPARENT SCAM – WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.
Right now, you are probably thinking that you would never fall for scams as obvious as the ones above, and you are probably right, but what about this one — Your phone rings. The caller says he is your nephew, and you recognize his voice. He says that he is in Mexico and has been kidnapped. The kidnappers are demanding $5,000 in Bitcoin, and if they don’t get it in 24 hours, they are going to cut off his thumb and send it to you “to show that we are serious.” What do you do?
This is probably an updated version of the old grandparent scam, but now using A.I. (Artificial Intelligence). All crooks need to pull this scam is a short sample of a person’s voice, which can often be found on Facebook or other social media websites. They can then run that voice clip through easily available A.I. software to create a duplicate voice that says whatever they want. They can also duplicate images and videos using similar tools. This isn’t just a theoretical problem. It is already happening. Last year, consumers lost over $2 billion to A.I. fraud, and that amount is rising rapidly. What should you do if you get a call like this?
1. Verify first. Call a trusted phone number and see if your nephew really is in Mexico. If he is in Mexico but not answering his phone, that isn’t evidence that he’s been kidnapped. He could someplace out of the range of a cell phone tower.
2. Listen for red flags. In this kind of scam, the caller will typically tell you not to tell anyone about this call, especially the police. Telling you to keep the call secret is a typical red flag. Listen for other signs that something is wrong. For example, suppose your name is ‘Stephen’, but the caller keeps calling you ‘Steve’, something that he has never done before.
3. Resist pressure for urgency. Slow things down. Scam callers almost always stress the need for immediate action on your part. No legitimate organization demands money within hours. Be suspicious of threats, stating or implying that something bad will happen if you don’t send them money immediately. You need to verify what’s going on first.
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