When homebuilders downed tools after the 2008-09 global financial crisis, they planted the seeds of a housing shortage that is boosting the wealth of existing homeowners and investors to this day. The same thing is about to happen in retail, or at least in one corner of it.
Open-air neighborhood shopping centers are now one of the hardest types of commercial real estate in which to find space. They have been fuller than America’s e-commerce warehouses for almost two years, according to data from CBRE, partly because there has been a flood of new industrial warehouse construction and practically none for retail.