Leading up to RECon, we are partnering with a number of firms that are telling our readers what to expect from the show this year, and how the market is doing in general. One of those outfits is CBRE (RECon booth C1024). Andrew Goldberg, executive vice president of the firm's New York Tri-State Region Retail Brokerage Services Group recently talked to us about his take on the luxury and urban markets.

"Luxury brands took a bit of a hiatus and now seem to be back in a fairly big way. If you look in Manhattan, you’ll see that Fifth Avenue or Madison Avenue notably went from a lot of vacancy to very little. That really happened over the last year or so. You specifically have Madison Avenue, Times Square, where you’re seeing more mass, fast-retailing, younger product. These flagship stores are all growing, and there’s not a lot of availability in that area. Nor is there a lot of availability in Soho. It’s more about the areas where you’re looking at flagship, urban high street stores. That’s still growing, still expanding, and those players are finding very tight availabilities.

[On the other hand], I would still say that we’re not seeing a tremendous amount in the secondary markets. However, the top tier malls that have luxury retail do not have a lot of availability. That business is strong and growing and expanding in the market. And that’s coming off a couple-year slowdown.