Where I live there’s this crazy new obsession with car washes. Like, 3 brand new ones being built on the same street. I get that they became way more profitable when they figured out the subscription model thing, but I feel like so many is unsustainable.

Around me, it’s car washes and storage units. Literally half of all the new commercial construction around me.

My village has a moratorium on new banks and is actually using eminent domain to take over a building from one. I have not seen any new gas stations going up. If you think it’s excessive it’s time to get involved in your municipal government, there are no doubt public hearings on zoning approvals where enough loud voices can stop or slow down overbuilding. That’s what happened here with banks. We have limited real estate and people got fed up.

No, but we’re a village of ~11k people spread out over a fairly large area.

No new gas stations, but there are enough of them. If anything new EV chargers. Banks are closing.

Yes. Banks and gas stations.

Also, self-storage facilities and car washes. And churches.

You know what they’re not building? Mixed use, walkable anything.

In my town, the only new businesses are car washes, vape shops, and drive thru coffee franchises.

We had plenty of all three to begin with, but now there’s far more than anyone could ever need.

Nope, I think most banks are actually closing some branches in favor of online service.

We build betting shops and fast food places.

No. Most banks barely have physical locations anywhere and every single gas station I can think of has been there for as long as I can remember pretty much.

Somebody’s paying for it…

Seems deranged, to me…

Simultaneously debanking the politically intolerable WHILE increasing the saturation of a place with banks … doesn’t make any sense.

& the basic rule about “a market can only support a certain amount of a given kind of competition” … means that whomever it is who’s getting loans for building those things, is going to be defaulting on those loans, which will, itself, be bringing-down banks, in your region.

Again, deranged.

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My city is building anything but what humans want. Benches, parks, trees are not built

For a while it was Chase banks specifically. Looks like they maxed out on those. What I see now are car washes, self storage facilities (a seemingly disproportionate number of), and car parts stores.

This can happen when companies are making massive profits but want to hide them.

i.e. if they’re getting government subsidies, either direct ones, or indirect policy support, then they risk losing it if they post record profits and draw attention to their lack of need. So instead they will increase capital spending: buy up more properties, renovate their stores with nicer fixtures etc. On paper this keeps their profits down as their costs have gone up, however, in reality their overall valuation has increased because they now own all these assets that they can use, lease, or sell in the future (assuming they didn’t buy junk).

Some of it is also just normal expansion. If a new neighbourhood is built, banks and gas stations are often the first to try and get in. For gas stations it’s to get the ideal corner, and for banks it’s because people often switch banks when they move houses to whatever’s closest, and then never switch again.

Some of it can be specific government policy. The current US government has crafted policy to boost the gas powered vehicle market for years to come, which may give more confidence in building gas stations and having them be profitable long term.

And some of it can just be normal market adjustments. i.e. they stopped building banks thinking that everyone going digital would eliminate them, but their projections were wrong and they’re seeing more people then expected who still want to go into a physical location and talk to a person, so now there’s a wave of buildout.

Also, yeah the landgrab aspect is real. It would work differently for gas stations and banks, but look up the history of McDonald’s, they’re mostly a real estate company: https://www.wallstreetsurvivor.com/mcdonalds-beyond-the-burger/

A bunch of gas stations and car washes. Car culture in my area is out of control. Feels like half the city’s land area is dedicated for parking…

The only fuel station built near me is a huge electric charging one with a few fuel pumps as an after thought and every bank branch has closed except one