Over the past 20 years, the period 1st quarter 1999 to 1st quarter 2019, the consumer has cumulatively “outperformed the economy, assisting the Retail Property Market to outperform other major property sectors over much of this period.

Retail Property challenges are partly about technological advances. But they’re also very much about old fashioned fundamentals…including a big affordability challenge

Competition in South Africa’s retail market is intense, with more than 25 million square metres of formal retail space currently, in excess of 2,000 existing shopping centres and close to three million square metres of formal retail space in the pipeline.

We believe that the 0.8% economic growth rate for 2018 as a whole was likely “property negative”, sustaining negative real growth in property values and total returns in single digits.

Many point to online retail as a key challenge to the Retail Property Sector, and no doubt it is one of the challenges, as technology marches forth.