Even with vacancy rates for regional and super-regional shopping centers reaching a record 11.4% for Q1, according to Moody's REIS, foot traffic at malls could come swinging back with a vengeance in 2021, according to a new analysis from Placer.ai.

The firm's analysis of more than 50 top tier malls throughout the country indicates that the sector has steadily been shortening year-over-year gaps since November. And while tough weather patterns across major regions in the US limited the recovery somewhat, March was a blockbuster month for malls, with visits increasing 86% year-over-year.

But there's another "but," Placer.ai notes: "while this number is indeed impressive, it is also a very limited indicator as much of these same malls were already closed by mid-month in 2020, thus challenging the effectiveness of the metric to show what is really happening in context," the firm notes.