Retail Centers See Modest Growth

U.S. malls and strip centers saw slight growth in the fourth quarter, but experts say the wobbly economy and recent disappointing holiday-shopping season point to a lackluster 2013 for retail landlords.
 
The average vacancy rate at malls in the quarter declined to 8.6%, down one-10th of a percentage point from the previous quarter, according to a new report from real-estate research firm Reis Inc. REIS +0.81% Mall vacancy has declined five quarters in a row since the industry hit a 12-year high of 9.4% in the third quarter of 2011, said Reis, which tracks the top 77 U.S. markets.



Weingarten Realty Investors

  

Rendering of a Petsmart store to be opened this year at the Six Forks Station center in Raleigh, N.C.

 

At strip centers, the rows of shops facing a common parking lot and often anchored by a grocery store, average vacancy declined to 10.7% in the fourth quarter from 10.8% in the third. That is just 0.4 percentage point from the highest vacancy rate in this category since Reis began tracking the figures: 11.1%, registered in the third quarter of 2011 and at year-end in 1990.
 

Read the full article here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323706704578229883215350160.html

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Health Clinics Set Up Shop in Former Stores

HealthEast Care System’s Grand Avenue clinic in St. Paul looks a lot more like the retail establishments that surround it than the typical institutional clinic once common in the medical industry.

Bathed in earth-tone colors and soft lighting, the waiting room offers patients comfortable seating, walls filled with art and decorative glass dividers. After a visit, patients can enjoy walking around one of St. Paul’s premiere retail neighborhoods.

The clinic, near the southwest corner of Grand and Victoria Street, is part of a trend to offer more attractive clinics and to place them in high-profile shopping areas. The clinic “offers better visibility for us — we’re much more a part of the community than at our former clinic,” said Len Kaiser, director of network development at HealthEast.

“We are trying to be more like retail with all the services we provide and the Grand Avenue location, in particular, has been extremely successful and serves as a model for our new clinics,” Kaiser said.


Read the full article here: http://finance-commerce.com/2012/12/health-clinics-see-success-setting-up-shop-in-former-stores/

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The Death of the American Shopping Mall

Mark Blinch/Reuters

America has too many malls.

I’ve recently blogged that many traditional brick-and-mortar retailers are being threatened with "economic destruction" by their advantaged online competition. In an interview with Bloomberg TV, anchorwoman Nicole Lapin asked about the implications of this dynamic on retail real estate. I said I hadn’t studied it, but I thought the ramifications would be very big and very negative (I believe the phrase "apocalyptic" was used).

I’ve since had the opportunity to spend some time looking at this issue, and I believe we’re seeing clear signs that the e-commerce revolution is seriously impacting commercial real estate. Online retailers are relentlessly gaining share in many retail categories, and offline players are fighting for progressively smaller pieces of the retail pie. A number of physical retailers have already succumbed to online competition including Circuit City, Borders, CompUSA, Tower Records and Blockbuster, and many others are showing signs of serious economic distress. These mall and shopping center stalwarts are closing stores by the thousands, and there are few large physical chains opening stores to take their place. Yet the quantity of commercial real estate targeting retail continues to grow, albeit slowly. Rapidly declining demand for real estate amid growing supply is a recipe for financial disaster.

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Real-Estate Firms Get a Handle on Twitter

The commercial real-estate industry is notorious for being slow to embrace new technology. Social networking is no exception.

But that is finally beginning to change. Some top firms are beefing up their activity on sites like Twitter and LinkedIn, and some brokers say they are doing deals thanks to leads generated by the sites.

As recently as 2010, four years after the launch of Twitter, many brokers didn't even know what the service was.

"People don't understand it," confessed Ron Houghtaling, CBRE Group Inc.'s head of social media, at a 2010 technology conference.

Today, CBRE leads the Twitter pack among major firms with more than 26,000 followers. Meanwhile Jones Lang LaSalle, is second with 16,048 and has a four-person social-media team that also manages accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn and other sites.

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Tech-savvy Moms Lead Home-based Food Culture

According to “Moms as Food Shoppers: Grocery Store and Supercenter Patterns and Trends,” a recently released report from market research firm Packaged Facts, the modern American mom is at the center of the new home-based food culture and at the front lines of the movement toward healthy eating.

Each year, moms contribute to spending nearly $200 billion on food purchased for use at home. The report reveals that 13.3 million moms (41 percent) consider their kitchen to be the most important room in their home, while 19.7 million (61 percent) say they enjoy cooking.

A growing number of these moms want to put a new spin on the same old menus, especially with new recipes and food products, and this growing desire has given influence to the internet and social media when it comes to household food purchases.

Read the full article here: http://www.progressivegrocer.com/top-stories/headlines/fresh-food/id36836/tech-savvy-moms-lead-home-based-food-culture/

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Retail Auctions Heat Up (VIDEO)

Who is interested in buying retail real estate in an auction environment? How much of auctioned retail real estate is distressed? Auction.com’s Joe Cuomo answers those questions on GlobeSt TV this week at ICSC-New York.

View the full video here: http://www.globest.com/videos/event_coverage/newyork/retail-real-estate-auctions-327396.html

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Housing Starts Surge, But Rentals Are the Drivers

The headline number for housing starts was big, exceeding expectations and sending the home builder stocks on yet another tear.

Tim Boyle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Starts hit 894,000 (annualized) in October, over 50,000 more than the analysts forecast. Housing starts are now at their highest level since July 2008. (Read More: Good News Keeps Coming for Housing as Starts Surge)

“We expect the builder equities will react positively initially, but then fade through the day once the report is fully digested as 'multifamily' was the key driver of the results,” warned Stephen East at ISI.

There is no question that home builders are benefiting from tight supply in the existing home market and overall improved consumer confidence. That was apparent in the home builder confidence numbers released this week, which hit the highest level in six years. (Read More: Builders Bump Up Thanks to Drop in Existing Home Supply.)

Read the full article here.

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