Impact of Large Chain Store Closures on Retail Rents

The state of the retail real estate industry has been heavily discussed of late given the rise of e-commerce. Retails sales growth has been tepid throughout the recent recovery, yet e-commerce sales growth has been robust. This has led many a reasonable analyst to think that sales at brick-and-mortar stores have been declining. Indeed, a number of old retail brands have shut down operations across the country.

Few, if any, have analyzed the impact of these store closures on real estate statistics. Having property- level retail real estate data, analysts at Reis have been tracking store closures for the larger, more high-profile brands across the country. In short, the Reis database includes 280 store closures in 59 of the 80 primary retail metros that Reis tracks, totaling 12.8 million sq. ft. of closed stores across the United States.. . . more