They weren't empty, I had a lot of invul gear in the sandstone and my keg/pot refill station in the Villa with runebooks on the first floor.
They're empty right now - until I can get creative with them. Like Blaise said, I'd love to set up a vendor strip mall but not sure we even have the player interest from enough people to run more vendors. Pretty much everything we need is usually found in Yew...so perhaps Jupiter will start playing again, Paws invades Magincia and establishes a community there on the beach or something. Hell I dunno. Wulver I'll take good care of the properties, and won't sell for anything less than about 100 billion (platinum).
I mean I could of swore I heard that there would be some new plat rewards coming up. and i know some ppl are saving for some dumb moat ( cynic - and his probably 5000 plat now )