ATLANTA—With the ISCS Southeast Conference in Atlanta right around the corner, now is a good time to take a pulse on the regional retail markets. The overarching story: there's more demand than supply on the investment front and Florida isn't the only hot market.

“In the retail sector, the amount of capital raised to invest in shopping centers drastically outweighs the amounts of available supply,” Mac McCall, regional managing partner of Franklin Street in Atlanta. “Both 1031 investors and institutional buyers continue to struggle for assets that meet their investment parameters.”

One big deal that recently went down in the Southeast was the sale of the Sunbelt Portfolio, which includes Publix-, Kroger- and BI-LO-anchored shopping centers spanning 513,723 square feet throughout Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Texas. All told, the 96.5% occupied collection included seven grocery-anchored shopping centers.