Retail Real Estate — The Next to Fall?
As we all know, residential real estate in many countries such as the US, Europe, and some Asian countries shows signs of deteriorating price rises. Coupled with a slowing economy which gives less people the opportunity to buy into the market (or at least, pay a premium), this leads to asset depreciation. Its largely believed by investors that retail and commercial investing is immune to this effect. Unfortunately, each part of the real estate market is tied into the same business cycle, and like every other option in investing, nothing is the perfect hedge against economic recessions.
The retail real estate market has already started to slow. In the third quarter of 2007, 7.4 percent of retail space nationwide was vacant, according to Reis Inc. A vacancy rate of 7.4 percent isn’t tragic by any means. But it’s the highest level since 2002, and it’s up from 6.8 percent at the end of 2005. The third quarter of 2007 marked “the tenth consecutive quarter of flat or deteriorating retail occupancy at the national level,” noted Sam Chandan, chief economist at Reis Inc., in a recent report. Thanks to continuing growth in supply and flagging demand, there was about 140 million vacant square feet of retail space in the third quarter of 2007, up from 124.4 million vacant square feet at the end of 2006.
That’s a lot of wide open space, considering that on paper, retail hasn’t started to slow yet. My advice is this — be wary about investing in large REIT or other types of real estate funds. As Centrino found out, being over exposed to one type of asset can make it a difficult task to offload and free up extra cash flows.
