Empty retail spaces are piling up around the city, and the industry shouldn’t expect any big changes until at least next year, according to a report from commercial brokerage CBRE.
Retailers have been hit hard by the pandemic, thanks to months of lockdown and lawsuits between landlords and tenants inundating the courts. Now, with the city well into its third phase of reopening, retail is slowly emerging from the dark period of the last quarter, when leasing velocity plummeted, vacancies reached new highs and prices continued to drop.
Still, it could be a long road to recovery for the bruised market, the report found.
Retail leasing in the second quarter continued to head downhill from its 4.1 million-square-foot 12-month average peak in the second quarter of last year, falling to just below 3.1 million square feet, the report said. The brokerage expects the trend to continue well into the second half of the year.