“Brick-and-mortar has been significantly affected over the past 10 years, no doubt about it,” Nadji told the CNBC audience.

LOS ANGELES—With ICSC's RECon conference in the offing, Hessam Nadji, president and CEO of Marcus & Millichap, offered his insights into the retail landscape on a recent segment of CNBC's Squawk Box. On the one hand, the GlobeSt.com Thought Leader noted that “the recovery we've seen in housing is now having a ripple effect with housing-related businesses.” That ripple effect, he added, has also carried over into commercial real estate generally, “mainly because the supply in this recovery has stayed very disciplined, given the severity of the last recession and the downturn that we had.”

On the other hand, Nadji noted the sector as a whole is still dealing with the “profound” effects of e-commerce. “Brick-and-mortar has been significantly affected over the past 10 years, no doubt about it, as the share of online sales has grown at such a fast clip,” Nadji told the CNBC audience. “We've had many retailers go out of business or contract their footprints. But the good news is that the survivors have really reconfigured.”

Thanks also to a still-limited development pipeline, with new construction being delivered at about one-third the pace we saw in the early 2000s, “the retailers that have reconfigured now have a much healthier inventory-to-sales ratio,” said Nadji. “Efficiency and profitability among brick-and-mortar retailers have improved dramatically overall.”