ATLANTA—In the last few years, as consumer confidence has returned, investors' interest in the nation's retail sector has grown considerably, and this outlook was apparent at the recent ICSC conference in Atlanta.
“I found the conference very bullish and upbeat,” Kris Cooper, a managing director in the JLL Capital Markets Group, tells GlobeSt.com. The conference was held from October 28 to the 30th. “There is still plenty of capital available, both debt and equity, and a lot of people were very optimistic.”
“We keep filling up vacancies and rental rates also keep going up,” he says. But like many other experts, Cooper points out that all of this visible strength has yet to translate into a significant amount of new development. Some builders have taken advantage of the pent-up demand for new product by constructing a limited number of grocery-anchored centers, as well as some big-box retail, but primarily in top markets where both they and lenders feel especially confident. “A lot of those developers got burned during the recession,” Cooper says.
Continue Reading for Free
Register and gain access to:
- Breaking commercial real estate news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
- Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
- Critical coverage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
Already have an account? Sign In Now
© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.