Dallas shopping center market gets slammed by COVID-19 – The Dallas Morning News

Dallas shopping center market gets slammed by COVID-19 – The Dallas Morning News

Dallas-area net retail leasing fell again in the fourth quarter.

For the last nine months, demand for North Texas retail space dropped sharply in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Net retail leasing fell by more than 183,000 square feet in the just-completed quarter, according to the latest update by commercial property firm CBRE.

“As colder weather settled in across much of the U.S. in the fourth quarter, both the COVID-19 situation and economic performance predictably began to deteriorate,” CBRE analysts say in the just-released report. “The Metroplex saw its third consecutive quarter of negative net absorption this year as vacancies continued to outweigh new leases.”

For all of 2020, retail building occupancies in the D-FW area fell by almost 1.2 million square feet, according to CBRE. It was the greatest such decline in more than a decade.

Last year’s big dip in retail and shopping center occupancies comes after a more than 2 million-square-foot net increase in 2019.

Overall retail vacancies in North Texas grew to more than 7% — the highest level in six years.

The greatest Dallas-area retail and shopping center declines were in Central Plano (-253,257 square feet), Lewisville (-197,882 square feet), West Plano (-193,949 square feet), Far North Dallas (-165,805 square feet) and the Upper Greenville area of Dallas (-129,020 square feet).

Downtown Dallas added more than 31,000 square feet of net retail leases in 2020, and Allen had net leasing of more than 58,000 square feet.

Almost 1.6 million square feet of retail space was added to the Dallas area in 2020.

The retail real estate sector has been one of the hardest hit during the COVID-19 pandemic thanks to stay-at-home orders and restrictions on restaurants, bars and entertainment venues.

Shops and restaurants across the country closed their doors for good in 2020.

Analysts hope to see a recovery in sales this year.

“The arrival of COVID-19 vaccines likely will stimulate retail sales and leasing,” CBRE analysts predict. “They will not prevent a difficult winter but should allow for some normalization of activity by mid-Q2 2021.”

Published at Thu, 07 Jan 2021 19:29:55 +0000