Shopping Centers Today is the news magazine of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)
Issue link: https://sct.epubxp.com/i/390025
hopping center deals seem to be coming fast and furious this year. in dallas a nontraded reit sponsored by cincinnati- based phillips edison & co. acquired the 70,500-square-foot northpark Village; in the cleveland suburb of beachwood, devonshire reit, of Whitehouse, ohio, bought the 249,900-square-foot pavilion shopping center; and in Fort lauder- dale, Fla., marcus & millichap announced that a brazilian buyer had acquired the 32,700-square-foot plaza del mar shopping center. S bidding Wars A crowd of buyers is chAsing A smAll number of properties for sAle, cAusing cAp rAtes to dive By Steve Bergsman o c t o b e r 2 0 1 4 / S C T 43 i l l u s t r a t i o n : p e t e r a n d m a r i a h o e y it is odd, therefore, that observers are showing concern about the lack of properties — at least the a-quality ones — available for sale despite a huge amount of liquidity in the market- place and buyers that are ready to pounce. "there is still not as much attractive product as the market wants," said ben thypin, director of market analysis at real capital analytics. indeed, the volume of transactions involving commercial-mortgage-backed securities, usu- ally the most common financing method for retail properties, was running behind 2013 levels — though thypin also points out that there is usually a flurry of deals in the fourth quarter, meaning that those numbers can still change radically. "there is a ton of liquidity, there's just not a ton of product trading," said Jimmy board, a houston-based senior vice president at Jones lang lasalle. "i'm surprised the cmbs market slowed down. Wells Fargo, for example, issued a report saying the bank was behind [the] 2013 numbers by $500 million in overall cmbs. in the past cmbs was the biggest part of the retail lending market." cmbs financing accounted for 48.26 percent of retail deals last year. so far this year, that has slipped to 47.7 percent, according to real capital analytics. the market for retail has taken on odd turn. through the middle of the second quarter,