David Blanchard, NAI Global Executive Vice President and Global Retail Council Advisor stated, “It felt good to be surrounded by more energy, more opportunity and more ‘upbeat’ clients that we will do more transactions with than ever before. We were busier than busy, all day and all night. It was a great event which will lead to great opportunities for NAI.”

Kelly Bland, Retail Council Chair says, “Our presence at ICSC affords the organization business growth opportunities and also creates a forum in which to share best practices while developing evolved plans and strategies. NAI’s 2013 ICSC RECon event was a success!”

Four representatives from Remote Sensing Metrics (RS Metrics) were incorporated into the NAI event presence. RS Metrics provides NAI Global and its clients with proprietary data bases including quantitative analysis of high resolution satellite imagery, demographic data, and open-source research.

The next three hours presented a special networking opportunity for NAI Global ICSC attendees and their clients, who engaged in spirited discussions during a social mixer.

Headquartered in Minneapolis, NAI Everest is a full-service commercial real estate brokerage firm providing office, industrial, multifamily and retail brokerage, consulting services, corporate solutions, property management and receivership services throughout the Twin Cities Metro Area. NAI Everest was founded by Gina Dingman, an industry veteran with extensive experience in the commercial real estate industry.

“NAI Global is a tremendous commercial real estate organization with a global platform that will allow us to broaden our services and enhance our ability to provide world-class service to our clients,” said NAI Everest President, Gina Dingman, CCIM. “We are excited about our affiliation with NAI and the opportunity it provides to partner with other firms to enhance our client services regionally and globally.”

“We are proud to have Gina and her team embrace and build the NAI brand all across the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metro Area,” said NAI Global Executive Vice President, David Blanchard. “Our business is expanding! The Twin Cities market is a critical Midwest market for us. We are confident that NAI Everest’s extensive local knowledge, relationships, commitment quality and results will greatly benefit our corporate and investor clientele.”

NAI Global is among the largest commercial real estate services organizations in the world, comprising 5,000+ professionals in 55 countries in more than 350 offices. NAI advisors such as NAI Everest work in tandem with its global management team to ensure clients strategically optimize their real estate assets. NAI offices complete over $45 billion in combined transactions annually and manage over 300 million square feet of commercial space.

NAI Everest is located at 520 Nicollet Mall, Suite 510, and Minneapolis, Minnesota 55402

First and foremost understanding Culture; specifically the customer buying behaviors and patterns.  Understanding what people are buying, their socio-economic composition, provides insights’ into Content and what is the best inventory mix to adapt to local market conditions.   Only once a strong understanding of the market place has been achieved can a retailer move to the next cornerstone which is Compliance.  Each country has their own set of rules and regulations regarding foreign expansion/ownership of property.  Compliance is critical to knowing how far a retailer is able to operate in a particular country.

Armed with the knowledge of local culture and compliance, this would enable a retailer to measure Customer capacity or more simply put, “How big is this market for my store or restaurant chain?” Being able to pin point the number of potential customers allows you (the retailer) to then frame Capacity/Competition.  Knowing how many potential locations the market could support in addition to understanding the local competitive presence is critical to framing market expectations and developing a strategic real estate blueprint.

Furthermore, maintaining a balanced (mixed) array of retail tenants impacts the level of traffic in the center (day time and night time) and the overall reach or attractiveness of the shopping center.  Larger enclosed malls with department store anchors tend to draw from a much larger area due to the composition of the tenant mix.  Smaller strip plazas draw from a limited area and are largely a convenience based destination.

Traditionally, developers build shopping centers in response to a growing residential base.    As additional retail developments cluster around a particular intersection, developers would push to maximize the foot print of their development; however, with limited regard for market supply and demand.  The designs/layouts of the centers were largely based on planning restrictions imposed on the property, seldom on the composition or need within the marketplace.  Perhaps it has more to do with poor planning than poor building.

Developers/landlords need to know the highest and best use of their properties today but perhaps more importantly for tomorrow.

The sales of those few Trophy assets are also the ones that major publications report on when they declare that the worst is over.  The recent sale of the Pritzker/Hyatt Office Building in downtown Chicago is an example of a trophy selling to California-based The Irvine Company for $625 million,  or $420 per SF. 

The divide between Trophies and Trash is also tracked by two diverging indexes.  The Green Street Advisors’ Commercial Property Index tracks 47 REITs, which in summary didn’t report the low as low and the rebound bigger than the Moody’s/Real All Property Type Aggregate Index, which tracks all same asset sales over $2.5 million. The Moody’s index, not surprisingly, reported a lower low and a much more modest rebound. 

The trash is obviously the other assets,  the dime-a-dozen suburban office buildings that are trading at per pound value and sometimes not more than dirt price, and non-anchored retail centers that were built ahead of the rooftops and now sit next to corn fields in the Chicago collar counties and next to cactus-filled deserts in Phoenix.  The retail properties are oftentimes half empty and with little hope of attracting  tenants that can afford to pay anywhere near the rental rates that justify their one-time value of $300 per SF.  The challenge as a buyer is to determine what type of property you are buying, not be teased by the notion of comparison to buildings that are defined as the other and pay accordingly.  There are markets for both, but the prices differ as much as corn does from cactus.

The Commercial Property PowerSale™ is an accelerated marketing program developed by NAI Global to match motivated sellers with investors and owner/users searching for prime investment opportunities. This unique marketing program gives sellers the opportunity to sell their asset quickly, reducing their holding costs and securing true market value for the property.

Interested buyers will have an opportunity to bid on industrial and retail/restaurant properties in 10 states. Large industrial properties include a 416,000 SF former Lenox plant on 56 acres in Galloway, NJ, near Atlantic City; a 238,000 SF industrial property on 40.6 acres near Chattanooga, TN; a 217,000 SF industrial facility in Salem, IN; and a fully entitled 300-acre mixed-use development opportunity in North Port, FL, between Sarasota and Ft. Myers.

The PowerSale™ also features 34 closed restaurants in Delaware, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and South Carolina, offered by a national lender. Building square footage ranges from 1,200 to 9,300 SF and includes former Wendy’s, Hardee’s, Boston Market, Golden Corral, Chevy’s, Waffle House, Roadhouse Grill, Pizza Hut, Sonic, El Pollo Loco, Popeye’s, Bennigan’s, Church’s, Papa John’s and more.

Prospective buyers and sellers interested in learning more about the Commercial Property PowerSale™ should visit NRC.com/PowerSale or call +1 800 747 3342 x102.

What happens to those hundreds of locations now? How many will go dark and close, be sold to competitors or redevelopers? What impact will all these changes have on the other grocery brands (i.e. Shop Rite, Albertsons, etc) as the available markets come into play?

A&P owners contend that they will reorganize and emerge from bankruptcy as an ongoing concern. But with millions in debt, an expensive workforce and declining profits, the next step is clearly unknown.

But what happened? Why hasn’t Dubai truly taken off?

The simple answer is the great recession killed foreign investment dollars, as well as discretionary spending for possible tourists. The property markets were hit hard, major new developments have been put on hold or cancelled altogether. Now, landlords in Dubai malls are looking to raise their rents by as much as 35% in 2011, putting significant pressure on existing retailers in the market.

With the global economy slowly recovering, it may take some time before Dubai sees significant growth again. Will it remain a buzz-worthy market? It remains unclear.

To better understand a more complete picture of a market area, i.e., who lives in a particular city or trade area, a market segmentation system brings a more robust understanding by combining a suite of variables together to categorize people into distinct groups.  People would generally be categorized under 10 main groupings, with Most Affluent being the first group and Least Affluent the 10^th group.  Within each group there would be sub-groups which could see the U.S. population broken down into some 70+ distinct classifications.  The power of the market segmentation  system is that it measures, quantifies and assigns people to a geographic point of reference on a map that describes not only how many people can be found in a group but more importantly the buying patterns or behaviors of people.  “Melting” a series of demographic variables together to create a classification allows retailers to more precisely measure a market’s size, and target specific potential customers.

The use and evolution of a market segmentation system is widely endorsed and used extensively across North America, most parts of Western Europe, and portions of Asia-Pacific (Australia, Japan).  In emerging markets of South America and Asia, countries have created a segmentation classification based on an Alpha system.  An “A” category reflects a high degree of affluence while an “E” category reflects a poor segment.  Retailers in North America have had to adapt to understanding their potential client base in emerging markets as the ability to segment a population in comparison to the U.S. or the U.K. is at the present time not comparable.

Use of a segmentation system is not limited to bricks and mortar retailers.  Consumer Goods companies rely heavily on understanding customer buying behaviors, and how much money people have to spend on goods and services.  With the advent of on-line shopping, internet based retailers use the same tools to sell their books, clothes and travel packages.

Segmenting a market based on a suite of variables is much more powerful than the traditional filtering or benchmark approach to analyzing a markets worth.

-George Anderson

Based in Toronto, Ontario, George Anderson is Vice President of Market Analytics for NAI Global, and works closely with retailers and financial institutions using geodemographic analyses to identify and evaluate markets for expansion around the globe.