On Fri, 06 Jan 2017 18:09:06 -0500, wrote:

On Fri, 6 Jan 2017 16:44:02 +0000 (UTC), John McCoy
wrote:

Ed Pawlowski wrote in
:

I don't know how much real estate Sears owns, but mall space is
usually leased. They may have more liability to the end of the lease
that what the space is worth.

Today Sears directly owns virtually no real estate, since
they restructured most of it into an REIT (which they still
mostly own, so indirectly they own the real estate). I have
read that around 1/3 of their stores were owned, rather than
leased.

I agree that retail will never disappear, but look around at how much
empty space is available. how many malls have empty spots? I know of
three stip malls built about 8 or 9 years ago. One is 100% empty, the
other two are 75% empty.

Two different expressions of the same problem...for big malls,
they got way over built in the 80's, and that situation is
slowly correcting itself. Around here about half the malls
that existed in the 80's have been torn down or repurposed,
the remaining half are doing well, since supply now matches
demand (more or less).

Strip malls are cyclical - there will be a shortage of strip
mall space, and several developers will rush in to build new
ones at the same time. Then there's a glut, and most of the
new space sits empty. Eventually demand will catch up with
supply, and then a new set of developers will build a new
surplus of strip space to sit empty for 3 or 4 years.

John
Around here the new ones fill up - and the old ones sit empty -----

I wonder how many of the "old ones" are filled with asbestos.