Shopping Centre Investing: A Hand Book

Whether you are an institutional investor or an individual investor interesting in acquiring a single shopping center, this book will serve as your indispensable guide. While your author anticipates the primary audience for this book will be a domestic one, some topics have been included with an aim at foreign investors as well. Shopping centers are all around us – the latest statistics (2021) peg the number at 115,049 with 27 percent of them in California, Texas, and Florida – the three most populous American states. At the outset, it must be said that physical retailing is in many ways alive and well. In 2024, 72 percent of retail sales in the United States are projected by Forrester – a respected research firm - to occur in brick-and- mortar stores. This book will serve as a guide for anyone seeking to invest in those properties or even develop or redevelop one. Successful investment in commercial real estate boils down to a single target– which an investor must always keep his or her eyes on – preserving or enhancing that property’s value. Notice, your author did not write “increasing its cash flow” – which many take to be their only goal. While this book has as its goal to disabuse potential investors of unrealistic fantasies, at its core is a belief a great deal of pride and financial success can be garnered by owning a shopping center. In my own case, when first visiting our second shopping center, I stood in its parking lot and tried to take in our property – which cannot be taken in without moving one’s eyes from side to side – and became a bit choked up just for a moment thinking of how proud my dad would have been to see this. Some investors considering purchasing this book may well conclude they have had enough years in this investment field that they know most of the ins and outs of shopping centers. Your author would caution that expertise in other types of commercial real estate does not confer competence in shopping centers. To those already expert in shopping center investment – your knowledge will not travel to the next generation by osmosis - buy a few copies of this book for your spouse, significant others, and children. When you are gone, they may well need the guidance this book provides. Other investors who have paid their dues in the fields of investing in office buildings, apartments, or warehouses may think transitioning to shopping centers will be easy; instead, they will find that without this book their shift will be a perilous one.