In the eyes of the international media, San Francisco has become the poster child for “the death of urban retail.” The media’s obsessive focus on Downtown San Francisco, however, masks nuances in the broader Bay Area retail market.

In the 1990s, when regional malls held sway in American culture, the mega-sized Galleria and NorthPark Center were prominent features of Dallas’s retail landscape. Fast forward 20-30 years, and retail real estate has followed Dallas’s explosive population growth northward.

For the first time since 2006 the retail availability rate across America’s central business districts (CBD) today is higher than in the suburbs. Chalk it up to another enduring effect of the rise of remote work.

Had retail space been overbuilt in previous cycles? Is it just now reaching supply-demand equilibrium?

Hardly any new retail space has been constructed during the past decade. Meanwhile, brick-and-mortar retail sales have risen as Americans spend more on experiences at places like restaurants, cafes and breweries. We expect a continued fall in the ratio of absorption to new stock.

Gloomy sentiment surveys suggest consumers should be pulling back on purchases. However, reported retail sales show that consumers are spending freely.

CBRE EA’s market analysis shows that a one percentage point increase in e-commerce sales has only a slightly negative impact on 5-year brick-and-mortar rent growth.

Consumer spending is likely to increase this year and next and shift from goods to services, assuming COVID-19 remains under control. This could give a boost to lifestyle retailers in affluent trade areas and popular leisure travel destinations.

Changing fundamentals, a shifting population and stable cash flow lead the retail sector to once again catch investors' attention. Read more in our latest report.

We assembled a panel of expert economists who specialize in each property type to talk about the outlook and pandemic implications for each. Read the recap or watch the presentation.

We expect a major increase in the retail availability rate which is forecasted to reach its peak in Q4 2021 at 12.5%, 386 bps higher than the pre-COVID level. We forecast that rents will fall and reach the bottom in Q1 2022.

It was a tumultuous 2020 and high levels of COVID-19 infections mean that it will be a difficult start to 2021, but economic prospects for the rest of the year are bright. This will provide a much more supportive environment for real estate, but challenges remain.

We expected to see another surge of e-commerce from the holiday sales as brick and mortar stores face limited capacity, social distancing and consumers fearing indoor public spaces. However, brick and mortar spaces are still valuable in terms of providing omni-channel options for both retailers and consumers.

Are there patterns in the data relating the likelihood of a shopping center’s demise to its location and characteristics?

Despite recent improvement in monthly retail sales data, a resurgence of COVID-19 cases poses concerns about additional temporary closures for retailers in regional hot spots. In addition, we are witnessing high-profile bankruptcies almost on a weekly basis, along with announcements of store closures.

The availability rate increased from the previous quarter in 54 of EA’s 63 tracked markets (including the sum of markets). It remains unclear whether retail sales will continue to have a strong bounce back in the following quarters once the federal stimulus checks and unemployment benefits disappear.

The impact of COVID-19 has put additional pressure on the retail industry, which will continue. However, with retail sectors being impacted so differently, their recoveries will have different trajectory paths.

We are expecting a major increase in the availability rate due to the pandemic, which we forecast to reach its peak in Q1 2021 at 12.5%. Our expectations are that both availability rate and rent will take 3 years to stabilize.

A significant (and worsening) shortage of truck drivers is raising shipping costs, which may spark the expected inflationary pressures that have thus far remained absent...

I recently moved from Boston to Denver and the difference in cost of living served as a welcome income multiplier. I'm not alone in that experience: strong push and pull factors are underpinning U.S. demographic and migration trends (and the local economic strength of markets like Denver, Austin, Nashville, Phoenix and more).

So what lies ahead for affordability?

From a consumer perspective, it will be spectacular. From a retailer perspective, there will be winners and losers, as always.

Real estate cap rates' decline alongside government interest rates over the past 30 years has buoyed returns, with property values at pace with inflation but property net income falling behind. If cap rates begin to rise, appreciation could vanish.

Online ordering of groceries is thriving and growing across the EU, but if “clicks” are to ever penetrate “bricks” in U.S. food consumption, a hybrid model may be necessary.

Q1 GDP growth was the slowest in three years. How concerned should we be?

In maintaining a historical time series of real estate stock, the industry standard approach is to calculate past quarters' stock levels by subtracting buildings from the current level according to their ages. This method doesn't account for buildings that were demolished, however, so the standard measure of historical stock is, by definition, an underestimation. To see if we can address this, we are developing a “gross” stock series that adds back...

With weakness in most segments, February retail sales disappointed. Delayed tax refunds and immigration policy may have contributed to the weak retail sales—the latter a particular source of concern for retailers in markets with large immigrant populations. Policy on immigration and the economy may represent the greatest risk to retail markets over the coming quarters.

Every economic recession has its unique origins, but it can also usually be characterized by the macroeconomic scenario that sparked it. The three scenarios that typically cause recessions have unique impacts on individual markets and property types and are the key to understanding how your portfolio will weather recessions to come.

Concern about a slowdown in consumer spending can go on the back burner, thanks to recently revised data from the BEA. The latest release shows significantly better Q3 personal consumption growth (2.8%) that was initially estimated (2.1%).