Excerpted from December 2017 Real Estate Forum article:
RETAIL: 2017 will bring “another strong year for retail investment sales as investors continue to chase higher yields in the real estate sector,” says John Tennant, senior director with Franklin Street of Atlanta. A majority of retail REIT activity will continue to focus on core/core plus markets “and you will continue to see these companies prune certain underperforming assets from their portfolios. REITs will continue to look for deals in the urban core with strong demo-graphics and incomes, and you will see a continued increase in the amount of street-front and mixed-used retail they will be carrying in their portfolios.”
For their part, says Tennant, retailers will continue to position stores “in the center of the strongest submarkets where their core customers are. Developers will be able to secure higher rents for the A+ locations that meet these retailer requirements. The complexity of these unique mixed-use deals will require developers to stay disciplined to keep their deals on budget as commodity prices for steel and concrete continue to rise, coupled with a tightening labor pool.”
