That part of the cycle is already here. I'm witnessing it in many FL markets. Naples is a prime example. There's a huge amount of inventory available but nobody is willing to pay the prices that the sellers want. More importantly, nobody can afford to pay the prices that the sellers want. I've study the demographics of FL very closely (it's the core of my job). About five years ago we were adding 1,000 people per day to the state's population (net of births, deaths, people moving in, and people moving out). About 850 of those were over the age of 50. If you were to control for the recent mass exodus out of Puerto Rico, those numbers would be closer to 750 and 620. However, the retirees that are coming into FL now are less affluent than the retirees we had entering the state five years ago.

Think about it this way: for a given group of 1,000 people, who will likely "retire" first? Those that can afford to. So those "retiring" in their 50s and early 60s tend to be wealthier than those retiring in their late 60s and early 70s. So, as birth years "age" the wealth of new retirees from that birth year tends to decline. A qualifier here: I'm considering a person retired when they move to Florida. I can't tell you how many "3-day" doctors, dentists, and lawyers we have here anymore.

600 stores gone!

https://www.usatoday.com/...-aid-deal/799242001/

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"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."

I need to expand this thread to include 2018:


"The collapse of Toys “R” Us Inc. is yet another blow for landlords, who now will have gaping holes of suburban retail space up for grabs. And few tenants would want them.

The debt-laden toy chain, with more than 700 stores across the U.S., became one of the largest victims of the retail decline when it announced on Thursday that it would go out of business after a failed rescue effort. The liquidation could dump millions of square feet of real estate onto a market that’s already bloated with vacancies from retailer bankruptcies and store closures, a trend that’s been escalating as shoppers increasingly turn to the internet."

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"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."

Here is one option for malls/

Ford moves into Fairlane Town Center - Dearborn Mi mall.

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Just Triing
Triathlete since 9:56:39 AM EST Aug 20, 2006.
Be kind English is my 2nd language. My primary language is Dave it's a unique evolution of English.

The leveraged buyout heavily contributed to this.

 
Drum roll please....

"Mall jewelry chain Claire's Stores filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, hoping to escape huge debts preventing the company from shimmering in a dim environment for retail."

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"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."

Its deserved. Too much focus on the death of retail. Seriously, who thinks any of the companies that are now gone or soon to be gone deserve to be around based on the way they are run and what their core competency is?

Would you start a business now to sell jewelry in malls?
If you started a toy company, would you run it the way Toys R Us was run?
Would you start a Sears style business selling both clothing and lawnmowers in the same massive store?

i don't think that retail grocery is going away any time soon. However, I think that the middle class stores are going to get squeezed out. Walmart and Amazon are pushing either delivery or pickup. We shop at Walmart a lot, and there are always a number of their employees filling orders for pickup

Separately you have the low cost retailers, Aldi, Walmart and such who will get the price conscious shoppers

Last you have the gourmet type grocery stores such as Whole Foods, and here in Texas, Central Market which will get the upper class

I don't see how the normal grocery stores survive

If you're interested in that subject, NPR's Marketplace did an interview with "Tim, Ben, and Hank" about the 2008 financial crisis. Pretty interesting stuff, regardless of what "side" you take on it. I don't think they feel "haunted" though.

Get ready for a new round of Chinese tariffs soon. I don't think the Chinese are going to like it. Seems like poking the bear.

The part that the news and the financial talking heads are not talking about is the over representation of private equity firms in these bankruptcies. The newest one is Toys R Us. The talking heads keep talking about online shopping blah, blah, blah, but they don't mention these private equity vultures. What happened to Toys R Us is that a group of a-holes leveraged the shit out of their take over of the chain, saddled it with $400 million in interest payments per year of their debt, and then blamed online sales for the failure. Total and complete bullshit.

I am not so sure about the poking the bear thing. The Chinese already have very high tariffs on foreign products and a lot of restrictions on foreign investment (Tesla wants to build a factory there, but China insists on owning it).

If we raise our tariffs, even just to match theirs, they can't raise theirs even more, and even if they did, the current tariffs are already a huge barrier, so a higher one won't make a huge difference.

They could raise prices on the junk they sell us, which is the same effect as us raising tariffs. I would think that they need the US as a marketplace more than we need China (we would love to get into the market, but they already have high barriers, so not too much to lose).

So, the question is, can they make up the lose in the US market in the Asian market?

I don't think it's a matter of economics. If they do nothing, the leadership will look weak. I don't think their leader wants to look weak against Trump, especially after tightening his grip on power. The new tariffs are as much about optics as actually making a difference in the deficit.

At this point I wouldn't touch a mall. I look at our local mall and wonder if Sears, Macy's or Nordstrom will be the first to close. Once that happens I see a domino effect which will force landlords to lower their rent or walk away. It's fascinating to have been alive during the growth and death of the mall as we knew it...

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"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."

Our local mall is falling like a rock in water. I popped in there a couple weeks ago to make a return from an online Gap purchase and just in that specific, small wing of the mall there were 4 closed storefronts, all of which had apparently been open at Christmastime. Curiosity got me, so I took a bit of a walk around the rest of the place and it was pretty much the same, or worse, in the other wings, with seemingly as many mall walkers as shoppers. And Macy's went to shit years ago, slowly distilling down from good brands to the lower quality lines within a brand to elimination of some of those altogether, completely unkempt, cluttered, beat up stores, now a total lack of the mid-level semi-luxe feel they once were known for, more like a TJ Maxx but with a less random selection and higher prices. The way some of these retailers operate, it's as if they're begging you to ignore them and shop elsewhere online instead. And since I can get higher quality online at the same or lower prices, all without the need to drive around, I'll happily oblige.

Funny your photo is of Northland Mall. As a kid before I moved to California that was the local mall for me. Saw Star Wars in the theater up the street. My first pair of converse all stars were bought there, and my Brothers friends used to go to that mall and get screen print iron on shirts made.

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2017 Cervelo P2
2017 Cervelo S2
itraininla.com
#itraininla

I grew up in Southfield and used to ride my bike to that mall. Small world...

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"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."

Correct, and I would say "no". China has far more to lose in a trade war than the U.S. Mexico has a lot to gain. If I were a Mexican politician I'd basically do whatever I could to keep NAFTA while cheering for a trade war between the U.S. and China.

A big reason the malls are dying is that they have become a hangout for people in gangs who like to shoot at other people in gangs. The mall here that was just torn down had lots of hip-hop stores and kiosks catering to those groups and the violence even drove most of those paying customers away.

The only other indoor mall in our city has draconian rules on who can be in the mall at certain times, age limits for those without adult supervision after certain hours and armed guards throughout the mall. Another mall, this one an outdoor mall, started getting the gangs after the one mall was torn down so they had to institute the strict rules and pay for security guards after a few big fights were started when rival gangs met each other in a pack.

Maybe normal grocery stores could compete on location and convenience. As long are prices aren't too much higher, I'd much rather go to the local Winn-Dixie or Publix (Birmingham, Al.) than Walmart.

But Winn-Dixie, big Southeast chain is in bankruptcy and closing 94 stores.

W-D recently spent a lot of money renovating some local stores and adding bakery and cooked food buffet sections. That seems dumb to me. I can't see the buffet making money. If I'm going to buy cooked food, I'll go to any of the number of nearby restaurants and eat in or take out. The renovation made the stores appear nicer but the competition, Walmart, is not nice looking.

Having said all that, I realize I've added nothing to your post as I've suggested that Winn-Dixie needed to pare down to become like Aldi instead of spending money to imitate the gourmet type stores. LOL

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It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev

It doesn't help when a business jumps into political issues and offends a bunch of customers either. Target has never recovered from their foray into identity politics and REI just poked its head into that tent too with the latest round of anti-gun political shouting.

Here's a good read here on where Retail is at - https://qz.com/...dle-class-are-dying/

It's the mid-priced market that is REALLY suffering and/or changing.

Anyone that I talk to who is working the higher-end or luxury market, and focusing on that, exclusively, they tell me business has never been better!

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog