Tangential, but how is retail ft² doing? There was a report in 2018 that the US had 23.5ft² of retail space per person, followed by Canada at 16.8ft² and Australia at 11.2ft². Every other country polled had 4.5ft² or less. When covid hit, people used this report to claim that the US would see a retail collapse. Did any of this come to pass? All my searches just come up with alarmist articles from 2019-2020.
tbd. no collapse yet because commercial leases typically last multiple years. Many leases are coming up for renewal in the next year, however. Might very well see a recession in commercial real-estate soon.
As I understand, it’s better for them to keep the retail spaces empty than drop rent. This was true when money was free, but it’ll be interesting to see how they adapt to renewals with the new rates.
