Shopping Centers Today is the news magazine of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)
Issue link: https://sct.epubxp.com/i/231459
sales and rent. Achieving this open communication strategy not only improves efficiencies, it creates shareholder value as well, making it a winwin for everyone. Larry Sajdak, President Inland National Real Estate Services Oak Brook, Ill. The recovery could certainly be stronger. But given the lack of new retail development over the past few years, the slowly improving economy has indeed led to a meaningful tightening of supply. For property management specialists like us, this means the coming year will likely bring increased opportunity to capture higher rents for investors. Indeed, this is among our top priorities as we embark on managing the retail portfolio of Inland Real Estate Income Trust, Incorporated — the newest company sponsored by Inland Real Estate Investment Corporation. As we see it, retail is still the best asset class, which is why IREIT is building its portfolio to focus specifically on multitenant retail. Despite all the headlines about Internet retailing and shaky consumer confidence, the U.S. economy is still massively consumer-driven. When you drop from about $250 billion in annual retail development to roughly $15 billion, which is precisely what happened in the wake of the financial crisis, the net effect is to ramp up competition at betterlocated, well-managed centers. And so we feel confident about rental and vacancy trajectories moving forward, especially as both the job and housing markets continue to improve. Nonetheless, spending patterns certainly have shifted. At IREIT's necessity-based centers, we are continually searching for service-oriented, Internet-resistant tenants, the For property management specialists like us, the coming year will likely bring increased opportunity to capture higher rents for investors. —Larry Sajdak, Inland National Real Estate Services kinds of stores that make you want to see, touch and feel. These tenants can be difficult to find. More often than not, they happen to be creative mom-and-pops with tight budgets. Unlike national chains, these operators typically lack the funding to execute omni-channel strategies themselves. That is where our property management teams come in: Increasingly, we are partnering with our local tenants to help them compete. We might bring in an expert restaurant consultant to provide some advice to an up-and-coming restaurateur, or tap a marketing guru to help a fitness retailer maximize its approach to social media. At a center with a sizable roster of lo- cal businesses, we might even set up a network that pushes store-specific digital coupons to shoppers' cellphones as they drive into the parking lot. We are in the business of keeping centers occupied. Proactive help such as this can mean the difference between falling behind in rent and surviving and thriving. We are also putting tech tools to work in-house. Our team members can now take rental payments right on their smartphones via the use of Square, a payment-processing solution, and we are using another tool to enable detailed virtual tours of our centers via the likes of Google Maps. This supports our mission by helping prospective tenants make site-selection decisions faster and more efficiently. Where tech trends will ultimately end up is anyone's guess, and so flexibility and open-mindedness are paramount. If something works, great. If it ultimately fails to live up to the hype, chalk it up to experience and move on. For property managers, the task at hand is to stay current and partner with retailers so that everyone wins. SCT Good luck J aN ua Ry 20 14 / SCT 43