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Data-Driven Confidence in a Scare Market
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Data-Driven Confidence in a Scare Market: How Intelligence Protects Your Next Retail Real Estate Deal
Retail vacancy is at historic lows. Rents are climbing. Competition for prime sites is intense. In today’s expansion environment, there is almost no margin for error. In this webinar replay, Kevin Bissell, SVP of Research at CRE 360 Partners, and Sam Collier, Managing Director, walk through a practical intelligence framework designed to de risk retail real estate transactions before capital is committed. This session is built for: • Retail real estate directors • Grocery and national retail ex
What You'll Learn in This Webinar
- Why traditional site selection metrics can create false confidence in scarce markets
- How to distinguish “good metrics” from resilient, risk aware opportunities
- The Four Part Intelligence Framework and how to apply it before committing capital
- Scenarios — stress testing realistic performance outcomes
- Downside — identifying hidden exposure in trade areas, competition, and deal terms
- Flexibility — structuring commitments to protect against shifting conditions
- Portfolio Fit — ensuring alignment with broader market and growth strategy
• How cross segment intelligence uncovers risks traditional dashboards miss
• Practical ways to embed intelligence checkpoints into your site selection and leasing process
• How to strengthen negotiating position and reduce the likelihood of deal failure
• Real world examples of sites that looked strong on paper but failed under disciplined review
Ready to See It in Action?
The complimentary Intelligence Review is a personalized, 1-on-1 session tailored to your specific markets, asset classes, and business goals.
About Your Presenters
Meet the experts who led this webinar. With decades of combined experience in commercial real estate intelligence, data analytics, transactions, and market strategy, they bring unmatched insight to every conversation.
Sam Collier
Managing director
Sam Collier serves as Managing Director of CRE 360 Partners, where he oversees both transaction and research services nationwide. With more than two decades of experience in retail commercial real estate, Sam has built a reputation for driving high impact leasing strategies and executing complex deals in competitive markets.
Prior to CRE 360, Sam spent over a decade leading strategic leasing and redevelopment initiatives for publicly traded REIT portfolios in the mall sector. His experience spans grocery anchored centers, power centers, lifestyle centers, and large format redevelopment projects. Known for his disciplined negotiation approach and deep retail relationships, Sam brings practical market insight and execution focus to every engagement.
He holds degrees in Finance, Economics, and Accounting from Lipscomb University and is a member of the International Council of Shopping Centers. Sam is also a CPA.
Kevin Bissell
svp - Real Estate Research
Kevin Bissell leads the research division at CRE 360 Partners, bringing more than 35 years of site selection and retail real estate analytics experience. He is widely recognized for combining rigorous data analysis with real world market intelligence to help clients make confident expansion decisions.
Kevin began his career in grocery real estate research and has held senior research leadership roles supporting national grocers, owners, developers, and investment groups. His experience includes trade area modeling, competitive saturation analysis, forecasting, and strategic market planning across diverse retail categories.
At CRE 360, Kevin oversees advanced demographic studies, GIS mapping, predictive modeling, and market intelligence initiatives.
Kevin holds a master’s degree in Geography and has been an active member of the ICSC North American Research Group since 2017.
Webinar Transcription
Full transcript provided below for accessibility, reference, and research.
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My name's Sam Collier. As, Robert mentioned, today, your conversation or presentation will be be led by myself and Kevin Bissell of CRE 360 Partners. The first question you might have is who is CRE 360 Partners?
So I will explain that a little bit to you as we get started. CRE 360 Partners is, a firm that offers, both a commercial real estate firm that offers research and tenant representation, landlord representation services. And one of the things we think, differ, differentiates us a little bit is the, the combined ability to offer both research and representation in, in, in one firm, and not to have to silo those.
Those functions or, or use them separately, that allows us to, to, to, as we say, become a place where insight. Meets execution., if you want another maybe visual picture, think of us as maybe a hybrid car, but not, not necessarily a Toyota Prius Prius, but more, more an F1. And if you didn't know, the F1 cars are, hybrid cars, very fast and precise.
So we, we to think of ourselves that way., a little bit about us. Mike, if you could take us to the next slide., again, my name's Sam Collier. I'm the managing director here at CRE 360 and Kevin Bissell, who's our Senior Vice President of Real Estate Research, leads the research group here at our firm.
And as you can see here on the slide, he is, he has a lot of experience. Our, our company is a, a, as far as organizations go, is a very young company, only have been in business for just under two years., but as you can see by the two individuals on the screen, we are not necessarily that young., next slide please, Mike.
So, today, we, we want to talk with you, more from the research side than the transaction side., the idea here is for all of you to, to start to think about, your intelligence and your research, as either center owners, on the landlord side or as retailers on the tenant side, or other stakeholders about how to make smarter.
And more intel intelligent choices in a market that's become increasingly demanding over the last few years, so that you can find, good locations, in a, in times where, where good locations are, often not available., but what we want to help you think about, is, is being, u using not just more data, technology is accelerating it.
astronomical pace. And so there's just more and more data available out there., but we're wanting to think as a group and as we talk to you today about not just using more data, but using the right data. So for today, we want, want to think about a couple of things. We want, want to bring out the idea of understanding blind spots for the parties involved in your, in your real estate transactions.
And we wanna think a little bit about cross segment intelligence., and what that means, and Kevin will get into that with us so that we can, find our way to the best outcomes, no matter what side of the table we happen to be sitting on. And then lastly, hopefully we can encourage you to be thinking about your processes and, and your, if you would, intelligence toolkit that you use to assess its its own weaknesses and strengths and, and maybe refine that better for your own use.
So the roadmap for today really involves thinking in, in four buckets. And, those would involve, the idea of a confidence crisis., sometimes there's, there's challenges in our confidence to make the decisions just because of the factors that are going on in the marketplace. Thinking about cross segment intelligence, what does that mean and what, what do the landlords know versus the retailers and vice, and, and, and each other's blind spots.
we want to think about a, a four part framework, if you would, that can help in the decision making process from, from an intelligence and research standpoint, and then help ourselves move from what could potentially be paralysis driven by data overload into action and good decisions., next slide please, Mike.
so first survey for you today, we're, we would to learn a little bit about who's in the room today. So if you could answer, this question, what is your role in commercial real estate?, you can see the choices here, acquisitions, research, leasing or real estate, legal, development, ownership, brokerage, operations, or other.
So take a couple minutes and respond to that if you would.
Okay. Heavy on the leasing side. Hopefully you allall can see that here., we have some development and brokerage folks on with us today. Ownership operations are here as well. So thank you for that. Mike, if you could move us, to the next slide, follow up question. How many years have you been in the business?
Zero to five, six to 10, 11 to 20, 20 plus. How long have we been doing this?
So good representation here., we've got, a number of us in the room who have been doing this for a while, so we should be able to get some great, feedback and insights from, from everyone. And we have, a number that are. Relatively new in the business compared to the rest of the group. So it's great to see such a diverse population.
Glad to see that. Mike, you can take us to the next screen. So when you think about the potential, for 2026 transactions. A good place to start is looking at 2025, national Shopping Center vacancy, held at about 5.7% across all product types. So this is everything averaged together a vacancy at 5.7% through the end of the year, 2025.
supply ended up at around 10.2 million square feet in 2025. There was good absorption., I read some reported absorption numbers of around 3.4 million square feet in Q4, which is strong, and that seemed to be driven, a lot by discount retailers and grocers, back filling spaces., if you look back a little further into 2024.
deliveries. Were in that 20 to $30 million range. If you poke back a little further in the data than that post 2008 when we had, the financial crisis, if you would've that timeframe, post 2008, the average deliveries were between 50 and 80 million. Square feet, per year in new retail space.
Prior to 2008, the average was typically in the low 200 million square foot range. As we finished, 2025, there was about 12 to 13 million square feet of new retail space under construction. So you can see that expansion opportunities right now and even for the last few years. Are not nearly as plentiful, as they've been historically.
Mike, if you wanna take us to the next slide. So that brings us to, to the next poll question. Try to keep you all engaged here on the afternoon. Which of these site selection challenges does your team face most often? Not enough of the right data, data overload without actionable insights or lack of visibility.
Into other party strategies, we did not offer another option here. So we'll ask you to maybe choose the one that best reflects, the biggest site selection challenges that you face.
Responses and this will, this will help Kevin a lot to see this not enough of the right data is the, the biggest response followed, really closely behind data overload and lack of visibility into other party strategies. So interesting spread there fairly, even just a little more in the, the not enough right data column.
Thank you. So Kevin, I'll turn it over to you to talk about the, this slide, talking about good metrics. Yeah, thanks Sam., good metrics, bad risk trap., we've all had those deals that we thought were going smoothly and then something comes outta left field., landlord development plans that shift traffic patterns or city changing traffic patterns.
a new administration in the city changing what the city wants to do. So you just have to be prepared. Look at the risks., we all know what happened with COVID, changed everything up. And also the housing crisis changed, everything up for developers and retailers. So you always have to look at the unexpected risks.
Next slide, please. What both sides are missing. And I believe, Sam, you were gonna cover the retailers. Yeah, yeah. Just from the retailer, perspective, of what both sides. Typically, or, or could be missing, for the retailer not knowing what the landlord's development pipeline is, is always part of, the, part, part of what, what can be missed on that side, as well as perhaps what the landlord's tenant mixed strategies are, what they, what they would to see happening in terms of their lineup in their property, that they're offering to their, their, their clients and their customers.
we typically, retailers aren't going to see the property level performance patterns for the landlord across the landlord's portfolio to see if there are any trends in there. That those are things that landlords are, are, are most often monitoring and trying to understand what the trends are, especially if, if they own multiple shopping centers or, or large portfolios, of course, they, they may not have good insight into the, lease negotiation leverage points.
that, that are. They're the hot buttons for the landlord, of course. And then the landlord will, will be trying to manage cotenancy risk and, anchor tenant stability. And, and, and definitely will spend a lot of time on, on those efforts. But those are things that, probably, the retailer does not have much visibility into as they enter into a transaction or attempt to Kevin.
Yeah. Owners and developers, they need to look at, this, the market changing., is it gentrifying? Is there new ethnicities moving in and dominating the market? They have to be prepared for that., other, other, mobility patterns changing? Are the road patterns changing?, new roads going in, going to, deviate the trade area from away from your site and, look at new, new opportunities for, developing, new formats.
I know one of the things we've been talking about recently is there's a, mass merchant that is actually opening grocery stores now and a lot of interest in that. So we're trying to figure out how that can fit into our development and, work with our owners. Shopping center owners, mom and pops also always look at good, strong mom and pops in, in a region and maybe they would be something that could expand into your area of operation.
Next slide please, Mike.
Beyond single lens analysis. So this is really, where my background comes in., we always start, with the traditional data demographics and, to me, demographics are always key to just about any site you look at., always running the demographics first, and it tells a lot. It answers a lot of questions.
It answers what the trade areas, incomes, education levels, age groups, ethnicities, and you're gonna be able to, market your site to the, correct retailer. And, also the correct, even right down the right brochure. Layered intelligence. So looking at things the, cell phone traffic, that you can get now, and even credit card data.
it's going to, it, it, it opens doors and lets you identify trade areas, lets where you're not or you're not serving by your shopping center or what retailers are not serving certain areas. And you can go and define trade areas that way., risk aware decisions. Always look at the backup plans.
So if you're developing a shopping center and you have, let's say a grocery anchored tenant coming in and things change and you should have a backup plan for that., other grocery backup options, look at different ethnic, grocers. There's just a number of ways you have to be, be prepared for any changes that come up.
next slide, Mike.
Municipal priorities and category migration already mentioned this a little earlier, about how a new administration may come in and change, what the, the plan was., even, even down to, things, traffic patterns. Roadways, being added or changed or, we had a site, back when I was at a reit, that we had all ready to go and they denied us curb cuts after telling us we were gonna get it.
So always have to be ready for the unexpected.
next slide please. Hitting opportunities in secondary markets. This is something we look at a lot and very closely. So, mobility shifts, again, traffic patterns changing is, is a big reason for areas being cut off or opening up new trade areas, ethnic shifts, new ethnicities, moving in and dominating area.
change the shopping patterns., so you always have to be ready for that., new competitors coming in. So a market where a new grocer enters something what's going on in the Dallas Fort Worth market now, where HE B's coming in and dominating the market and is making all the grocers, take notice and, defend their territory.
category pioneers., so again, new, new formats coming in and changing what the categories are defined as is also another opportunity in secondary markets. Next slide, Mike. So we use the four point decision framework. We're looking at scenarios, the downsize, being flexible in portfolio fit. Does, your, your plan, your site, your what, your retail fit into the area.
read redefine how your, your fit in the company's, it fits into your market growth plan. Does the market fit your growth plan? Is it the right demographics? Is there enough opportunity for your format, developing, put, fit into your portfolio for shopping center owners?, does it make sense to have another shopping center? Is there too much competition? So it's all part of the four point decision framework.
Sam, I believe you were gonna do this one. Yes, sir. So, when you think about a, a good decision framework, and what, what that can do to help mitigate risk, here's, here's an example for us to think about, working strictly off of perhaps demographics and, a simple set of criteria., on the left side, our example site, may have had strong demographics and high traffic counts.
appropriate levels of, of competition that still, made the project, or the site or the space seem it was going to work., the rents, that were being asked, required, may have been acceptable and fit within proformas and, and using, using that data, a decision may have been arrived at that, that would say, Hey, we're gonna approve this site.
We're gonna move forward with this deal or this space and this shopping center., but if, if. What we want to help you think about is, is a decision framework that might help protect against that., and what that might reveal with a, with a more robust decision framework might illustrate or might unearth, in your process.
things the anchor tenant lease, maybe the anchor tenant has, not mu doesn't have much term left on their lease. And this, and this example is expiring in, in 18 months and had no renewal commitment or, or maybe even control through options over their space. So that would, that would certainly, create a, another level of risk that may not have been contemplated in the, in a simple example on the left side.
that anchor departure could have a massive impact on traffic, and that's one of the reasons, anchors are anchors, good anchors drive a lot of traffic to sites., Kevin and I live, a lot of our time in the, in the grocery anchor shopping center world. And, and certainly that's true in that world.
and as a retailer not knowing these things, you, you may find yourself in a, in a situation where you lack cotenancy protection, perhaps in your, in your lease or in your documents., flexibility, could have been, could be impeded, had you move forward with the transaction and found yourself, tied into a long-term commitment with, not much wiggle room, to, to undo the lease and to exit, exit the scenario.
And so, the last piece of the portfolio fit would be something that, would be a, a critical key point, but any of these other three above., if you identify those as part of your, your framework, may put you in a different position totally and, and change the outcome if you would, here to maybe leaving, walking from the project or, or renegotiating, your position there.
Mike, if you can take us to the next slide. So, Kevin, thinking about, graphically here, we're talking about, best case scenarios and, and downside and other risks., when you work with, with your clients, have you experienced clients that ask you to maybe model changing markets for them, beyond something, beyond just the current situation, from a data standpoint that that market is in?
Have, have they asked you to, to model, potential outcomes later down the road, five, 10 years down the road to better understand those impacts on their decision?, that happens all the time., the clients are all, they, they come in with the, the best case scenario and, we look at it and we always, run, well downside, options and other scenarios.
So if you can't get, grocer a what about grocer B, C, and maybe even a D And we can, sales forecast for all those grocers. So, yeah, we're always trying to, mitigate risk, and help them make that decision. And, sometimes it does come to that, that final decision where they just have to walk away from the site'cause it will not work.
So yeah, we're, we're always looking at that, Sam. Great. Thank you, Kevin. Mike, next slide please., second, the second checkpoint, if you would, in the, in the, process can, can be, downside protection., we've got a lot of seasoned people. On this webinar today, and so they'll be quite familiar with many of these concepts.
downside protection, were pro protect would be protections. You would, in addition to, other data-driven decisions, try to build into your documentation to protect yourself, in your leases., that could involve flexible lease terms, of course, cotenancy and radius protections, rent abatements.
and, and, and perhaps even clawbacks, for capital expenditures that are made, if, if, certain triggers happen and, and, lease flexibility to, to terminate, becomes available. Next slide, please, Mike., checkpoint three would be flexibility and optionality., so these are other, other considerations that,.
You may want to try to have in, in your deals, in your decision process, such as, do you have expansion rights?, what, what sublease and assignment flexibility do you have?, do you have control through renewal options? And how much of that would be best or optimal for, for you and your decision that you're making, whether it's offering those as a landlord or, or requesting those as a tenant.
Something that we we're seeing more and more of, that I am anyhow, relates to popup, popup uses., there are a number of tenants out there that, are repositioning. There are fleets, just by example, from certain types of retail properties, to other types. And, a number of them have been interested in opening pop-up locations.
maybe they feel that the. The project or the center that they're in currently is, on a, on a downward decline and showing obvious signs of, of degradation to the point that staying in that project is not, a long term viable option for them. And, and I think many of us probably have seen these popup stores pop-up uses happening, and, and so, what those deals look can vary, but certainly creates, optionality and flexibility for.
Both the retailer and the landlord., also, as a recipient of a, maybe a popup deal that, starts with a shorter term perhaps and converts to something more long term upon the success of the popup operation. Mike, you can take us to the next slide., again, just, just putting some ideas in front of you about staging commitments versus all, all or nothing type of.
Of bets on real estate and most of what we, have been talking about up to this point really lend to that, just creating flexibility in your transaction cycle, no matter what side of the table you sit on and, and the different approaches you might have toward creating that for yourself. Mike, you wanna take us to the next slide, please, Kevin?
Yeah, the checkpoint for portfolio fit and strategic alignment., includes a strategy and expansion alignment, geographic market impact, brand positioning and resource operational demands all fall into this., I know when, I was at, major REIT that I was at with before, we looked at all four of these all the time.
what, what markets were we gonna move into? What markets were we gonna exit?, brand positioning., I know,. We, we were based in Houston and, we were, always concerned about if a hurricane hit Houston, that it could take out a large part of our portfolio. So we were always looking to be, geographically diverse, also, diverse in our tenant mix.
so if somebody filed for bankruptcy, you weren't heavily., position with one, one retailer so it wouldn't, kill the whole portfolio would, you could spread it out over the whole portfolio., so we were always looking at the portfolio fit and strategic alignment. Very, very important.
Next slide, please, Mike. So we're just using this as a flow chart, to help you understand. It's a, complicated flow chart, but, I, I know everywhere I've worked, I've always set up some type of a flow chart, or at least in my mind, to, come up with decisions in how to move forward or how to kill deals.
So it's always important to, to have some framework and, a flow chart, in your process. Next slide, please, Mike.
And Sam, is this one yours?, I think this one. Yours, Kevin. Okay. You're right. Surprise, surprise., so applying intelligence, again, I'm asked all the time doing the research, is there a silver bullet? Is there one program or one., way of looking at things that is gonna answer all your questions, and there really isn't.
It's, looking at several different things. Again, I always start with the demographics That always answers a lot of questions, or at least drives you in the right direction. Cell phone traffic is also a, a good key one. I know when that came out, really into prominence in the last five years.
there were several people that I knew that always thought that that was the silver bullet, that it was gonna answer all the questions, and they've pretty much come around., I have one, good testimonial to, the cell phone traffic. Here in Houston, there's a grocer that when you look at it, it's always in the top 10% of grocers in Houston.
But when you look at the sales, it's in the bottom 10%. So traffic does not equate to sales and vice versa. You can have a very slow store that has high sales. So you just have to know your tools and use several different tools to cross reference those to get the the best idea. And that goes for retailers and for and for landlords.
Next slide, please, Mike. Another, another question for the audience to participate in here. What kills deals most often for your team? We've given you four, four choices here. Is it approval delays? Is it rent negotiations? Could it be timing issues or co-tenancy concerns? Those are the four choices.
You may have, an other that, that kills deals more often for your team and certainly would love to hear about that when we, when we get to the q and a.
Results are in approval, delays and rent negotiations, with rent negotiations, taking, taking first place here, approval delays, and then timing issues. Good tendency concerns., not huge, factor in at least this group that's with us today. Good feedback. Thank you. Next slide, please. Mike. Kevin, I believe this one's yours.
That is. So again, as I mentioned, last time I was speaking, we use multiple different platforms and different data sets to look at and. Understand a site or a location., and that goes for both retailers and shopping center owners., so some of the immediate, intelligence sources you can use.
Municipal planning departments, again, that's hit and miss. Some of them are spot on and they have all the data you're gonna need., you can have great housing studies and, tracking growth, and then other cities won't have anything., broker networks are always good., mobility data, we talked about that earlier.
that's always a good resource. Competitive intelligence. Where's the competition?, does your site fit in and, the strength of those competitors?, the only thing that's missing here again, is I would say the demographics. And again, the demographics to me are always the key and it's the starting point that I always look at first to understand a site.
next slide. Sure. So as, as you, as you think about this, and perhaps you're, you're thinking about your own frameworks within your own organization or your own framework, within your role or your job, to, to guide your company's real estate decisions, you may be wondering, what, what expectations or timeframes can, can I reasonably expect, to run a good, decision framework?
And so we've, we've outlined something very simple., which would suggest here that you could, you could run a process, and again, it's, it's very dependent on the size of your project or the, the role that you have in the business., but which suggests you could run a very, effective 30 day process by just breaking it down.
And the simple steps., something that's, very helpful oftentimes are to, to simplify things., this one, this one shows a, a methodology, a simple methodology that would break it down into weekly steps, for you to work on in this process or to guide or oversee, depending on your role., but the potential of course exists as you go through these steps on a weekly basis.
In this example that you could run parallel as you become more and more proficient., in your process. But, you can see the process of auditing, understanding your intelligence gaps, identifying, and contact key intelligence sources, applying your frame framework, maybe to a pilot site if you're looking for multiple sites, and then document your learnings and scale your process.
Of course, ultimately you wanna take action, which is what you're striving for. Next slide, please. This is you, Kevin. Yep., so again, the key takeaways we wanted to you to all take away from this presentation, move beyond the single lens analysis., again, use more than one research tool., look at it from many different points of view.
It, it, it lets you understand the, the, the site either for a retailer or a shopping center owner. Apply the four part framework. Again, that's a four part process., so step through that and make sure you fulfill the needs of each one of those steps. Build intelligence into the process. So, there's always, when we look at something in research, we're usually the first ones to look at a site and get to understand it.
but it can change over time. So build a, build a process into that where it's being reviewed, over and over again to make sure changes are not occurring. Start with the quick wins. So if you can, take down a site and get a gas station on the corner or something that, start with a quick win to help get the site moving.
Next slide.
Okay. How, how can we think about applying this to the pipeline? We're, we're, we're coming down to the last, couple of slides here., and this was a lot of ground to cover and we covered it pretty quickly with a lot of slides. But we want to, we just want to encourage you, to, to think about, how this applies to you, to your work, to your business, to your role.
And certainly, we want to encourage you if you have more questions or just to discuss ideas that you have to reach out to, primarily Kevin as far as research, would, would go and, and processes that., but certainly reach out to us., either one of us would be happy to speak to you and talk more about any questions you have.
and we think that, we think that would be be a great conversation and we're happy to help., you will, REI will receive a link, after this presentation in your email that will help you get in touch with us as well. Mike, can you take us to the next slide? So, so q and a., Robert, I don't know if you have already covered this or want to add anything here, but certainly there is a box hopefully at the bottom of your screens.
Yes. So if you would to submit a question, if you look at the bottom of your screen, you should see the q and a box there available. Feel free to use that feature to submit any questions that you have, and we'll give a few minutes to let that populate. Okay.
I've got one that was given, given to me in advanced, for you, Kevin. The questioner said, my company acquires grocery anchored shopping centers. Could you help us understand the stability and relative market strength of the grocers in the centers we are considering purchasing?
Yes., so that's one of the things we do., we look at an asset, we determine the strength of the grocer in the market, where it fits into the market. Does it fit the demographics of the market and any threats to that shopping center?, either competitive threats or, ethnic changes to the, the shopping, patterns.
we, we do all that type of analysis. Great., follow up I think sounds it's from the same person. We own a center that has a vacant anchor box. Could you help us attract a grocery store? Or fitness concept and, and how, how would you go about helping us do that? Yeah, again, we look at shopping centers all the time.
it's one of the, I guess one of our biggest business points is people come to us and say, Hey, I've got a shopping center. It's got a box in it. We think it fits for a grocer, and we can look at it and pretty quickly let them know that, does it work for a grocery operation or not? Or, or, what other retail would also fit into the center, but primarily grocer, we can tell them, number one, it fits the demographics of the trade area or it doesn't.
And a lot of times, I would have to say about a third of the time, the answer is, your shopping center doesn't work for grocery. So, which, which is, which is a good answer. It tells them to quit pursuing groceries and go look at, another form of retail., other forms of retail that we look at, we, we can, my background at the Reed as head of research, that's all we did was, we had a watch list for all of our centers and we had a portfolio review, several times a year.
We would go in and look at the shopping centers and look at the, the, retailers that were under threat of closing, and we would come up with backfill options for each one of those. So yeah, it's definitely something we can help that person out with. Okay. Couple more coming in now., what sources, this is from Savannah.
What sources do you recommend for mobility data? A lot are too expensive for small brokerages. So we use placer. We've used, other, other, other traffic data in the past., we Placer. I, I don't wanna make it a commercial for Placer, but right now they are definitely probably the market leader and they are expensive.
So I don't know if there's a cheaper alternative out there. We're constantly reviewing our, vendors. To see, if there is something better or there, there's always something coming along, but right now, Placer fits that for us. Okay. And if anyone has any, any suggestions, please put that in the chat.
We'll share that with the group., from David. The best way to convince a tenant that foot traffic does not necessarily equate to sales, it's tough to get. Center and store sales. So what's, what's the best way to convince a, a tenant that foot traffic does not necessarily equate to sales? You've got some experience with that, don't you, Kevin?
Yeah. My, my example earlier about the grocer here in Houston, we see it all the time and, yeah, it, it, it's hard to prove, again, the people who believe in the, the cell phone traffic data., it's, it's hard to convince them that, you've gotta think out of the box., proof is in, if you can get the sales for the store, either going in and talking to the manager and doing a tenant interview and just seeing what he says and see if it lines up with the cell phone traffic.
And does it, are there instances where the, knowing where the geofence is actually drawn is important on a center? Oh yeah., yes. So we've seen that before where the geofence has been wrong and either it's inflating the numbers., we saw one that was next to a Chick-fil-A and, so it was capturing part of their drive-through and the numbers were going up and we, we were looking at saying, this doesn't match what we've seen in the field.
And, sure enough, the geofence was wrong. So there are ways you can check and, and see what the geofence doesn't match up. Doesn't make sense. Great. Thanks Kevin., with, with com, this is from Cass with competitive threats. You mentioned. Do you have visibility into tenants lease expirations via the landlords or another research means?
I don't have that. We've never really looked at that on our end. That might be more of a question for you, Sam. Typically not., you may be able to get some insight through, conversations. I would probably lean harder into my broker network, to try to try to get that intel, honestly from Nicholas, for a large track of land.
How do you perform a feasibility study in order to determine a complete multi-tenant project?, well for a large track of land, something that, we always, again, we're, we're pretty much grocery guys. That's where we always start., so we identify what grocer would fit into that, development.
and run all the traps. Typically, we're looking to see if there's more than one grocer, so you have options., but that's where we always start. Is, we'll start with the, the grocer, maybe look at hardware, does it fit for our, hardware operator, a mass merchant, that type of thing, and go on from there.
Got it. Thanks., this is, from someone who works for a national coffee shop asking the question, saying that I check the demographics a lot, but what would be the main point on them to understand how the area behaves? Is it age? Is it median household income, population, diversity of the population, et cetera.
Advice that you would have, Kevin, for a national coffee franchise shop. And pinpointing key, key, data points for themselves in in demographics. So all retailers have their customer profile., so I'm not sure what the coffee, shop, profile is, but you would have that, or should have that. And, running the demographics, we, we run an extended demographics report, which, I believe it's eight pages long.
And, it's got everything in there. It's got, ethnicities, it's got eth,. Age breakdowns, it's got household sizes, where people work, the types of business they work for. And then just the basic ones, incomes and education., and you can create, I said, first thing I always look at is a, is the demographic profile of a site.
That tells me so much about the site, what it can support, who the best, tenant is for that site., so you, you just have to understand what your demographic profile is for your coffee, franchise and, and figure that out by, by running the demographics on each one. Okay., from David Tenant seemed more interested in visibility.
Then sales at a particular store. Brick and mortar stores seem to be becoming advertising for online shopping versus the other way around. Do you agree or disagree? So I agree with that., we worked with a, a major, department store. And, they, they were closing stores and they did not closing stores because they would tell us that when they would close the store, their online sales would plummet in the market.
, so it is a billboard. It makes people think about it. And also it's a place where they can do the returns. So you're absolutely right. It it, it is a billboard. They want the visibility. A question about Kevin. I know you've, used a number of demographic and mapping platforms, having so much experience in, in the grocery segment, but what, ke, David is asking, what service do you use for demographic data?
so a, again, with our grocery background, we use a group, called PopStats Gras Company., we it because the data is, is very, the geographies are very small. It's right down to the zip plus four, block group level., and instead of dealing with census track data, which is much, much larger, there's, dozens of block groups, within a census track.
this is much more finite and it's, it's much more manageable. Census track can spread across the river block groups do not., so that's, we use, PopStats, demographic data. There's, there's a lot of great demographic data out there. Pop stats is based on postal route information. And, again, when, when I was in the grocery business, we started using pop sets, we were one of the first.
Groups that do it. And we were sworn to secrecy. Don't, don't let other competitors know that what we're using.'cause it was such good data at that time and it still is very good. Is there anything that you think is better out there right now? Currently?, not that we've seen. Okay. You mentioned earlier, that you didn't feel that, that necessarily there's a silver bullet out there.
Is is there a research tool or a vendor that. That can answer all the questions or prove up a location, or do you need more than, than one tool? No, a again, we, we start, we always start with the demographics and then we'll run the, the tr, traffic analysis on it and, go from there., it, it opens doors.
It lets you, it lets what the site's. Where it's pulling from., when I was at the reit, we always had to run, demographics based on, mile rings, one, two, and three mile rings. And that was,'cause that's all Wall Street looks at., they, they didn't care that the, the,.
Trade area wasn't a one or two or three mile ring, but it was something more of a polygon. And, so again, one of the, the first things we do is we run those demographics and they are ring demographics. We'll run 1, 2, 3, and five, and then we run a seven minute. A 12 minute drive time. And the drive time is so important'cause it shows you where the barriers are, where you can't get through a, across the freeway or a river, or there's a large industrial area that's, that's blocking, the, path of traffic.
So we look at all those, it, it, it's always, to me, it's always gonna be more than one tool and a lot of times. It does just start with the demographics, where you run the demographics and you say, wow, this is not a fit for a Whole Foods. This is more of a save a lot type of a, a project. So it, it can define what you're looking for and what the project can be or can't be.
Great. Thanks Kevin., no, no, no. Good Q and A in our business, could ever avoid the topic of ai. So not surprised to see a question about ai., do you use AI in your work, Kevin, or what are your thoughts on, on using it in, in the work you do? So, we currently do not use ai., we're not opposed to to doing it.
We just, I think we wanna understand it more., I have seen things generated by AI and you can tell, so I think it's a little rough right now. And hopefully it will get better in the future, but there, there's nothing, nothing better than a good analyst looking at a site and understanding it. What do you, how do you feel about, speaking of analysts and sites and those reviews, what, what's your thoughts on boots on the ground part of the analysis?
to me, boots on the ground are always going to be the best, analysis you can get. Going back to my read days, we would go out, you're, you're sitting on a computer looking at something on an aerial and looking at the demographics. And then when you, you get it, you draw some conclusions and sometimes they're right, sometimes they're wrong.
You go out to the site and you're, wow, I was way off on this., and sometimes that's in the right direction. Sometimes it's in the, Hey, this is not a good site for us. So, boots on the ground is always the best., I know there's, groups out there, right now., saying that they can predict store sales by using, traffic data.
And we have not seen that., we have not seen that being very successful yet., they're off and we were hoping they would be off low or high, but it seems they're all over the board. Okay. So boots on the ground to us is always the best way to at least, understand and evaluate a site. Not, not to put you on the spot, but do you have any examples you can think of over the years where the analytics and the actual site market tour did not agree with each other?
one way or the other? Maybe something the numbers weren't, the different decision., tools weren't, weren't pointing to something that would work. But when you, when you got out to the market and got to the site, you actually decided that it would work or vice versa. I'm trying to think. It, it, it's happened several times and I'm, I don't know why I can't think of it now, but, again, when, when you run the demographics and that's where you start and you get the site information.
And you start looking at it, Google Earth and try to figure it out, and you get out to the site and it's totally different. Maybe there's,. Hundreds of homes being built that just didn't show up in the, the Google Earth., and you get it when you're standing at a site and you're seeing the traffic.
, I, I just had that happen to me in Albuquerque., two weeks ago where I went out and looked at a site that I was high on, but once sitting there at nine o'clock in the morning and then coming back again, twice, and watching the traffic at the intersection, it really, I, I actually called the, the developer developer up that we were working for and telling him, this is the best site you can get.
This is great. So, yeah, it happens all the time. Sometimes it reinforces what you've already thought, and other times it makes you ask more questions. Yes, it's happened before, Sam. Great, great. I also have seen that in, on the transaction side many times., question, another question that's come in. Is there a side analysis service for someone to use, that are new to retail or a small company that cannot afford a good full-time analyst?
well that's what we do., don't, don't wanna toot my horn or our horn, but that's exactly what we do., and we work with different groups, we fit your needs. Great., another question., do you see, do you, do you see, AI encroaching more and more in the commercial real estate research?
Do you think that's that's a trend?, yeah, and it's, it's from talking with people within the industry., and again, it's a lot of senior management., when you go to the icsc, almost every seminar has, has, something on AI added to it now., and when the senior management are getting these ideas that everything can be done with ai.
And I think to an extent there are a lot of things that can be done with ai, but, it's got its limitations. And,. Senior management's always trying to save money and, hopefully they're not gonna gut research departments thinking that everything can be done with ai., I don't think we're at that point yet.
I don't know if we'll ever get to that point., and, and it's, it's, it's a little disturbing to me that it's happening so fast., I would to see a gradual transition and see how things prove up., but, I guess proof, proof will be in the pudding. Great., just a reminder, anybody that, is listening to this webinar, whether you're live or, many will receive it that registered and we're not able to attend, they'll receive a link in their email, which is great for them.
They can watch this at their leisure, rather than binging on Netflix. But we want to just remind everyone that, we're offering, an opportunity to speak with us at your convenience. We wanna set up a time, our contact information. Is on the screen here and will be included in the video replay that's sent to you.
and we're offering and, and happy to spend a, a, a complimentary intelligence review if you would, just to talk about your scenario, situation, processes. Any questions you have, anything that Kevin has has brought up on the, on the research side, certainly. And, if you have needs, as a landlord, as, or as a tenant, we're finding, even though our company is relatively young in terms of its age, we are having a lot of success with, offering a combination of in-house research and various, landlord and tenant rep representations.
has been a very powerful combination for us. And, we're very lucky to, to have this in-house and have, helped, a couple of,. Clients who are new clients of ours or have national footprints, national retailers, find, multiple locations, in the last year and a half. So very successful for us, and we'd love to offer it to anyone that can use that from us.
that's about all we have on the, on the questions that have come in. And I'm gonna turn it back over to, Robert. And I just wanna say thank you again to everyone we know. It's,. An important part of your day, when a lot of work gets done after lunch, you've run through your calls and, and now are sitting down to to, to get some work done.
And so we're glad that you took the time to join us here today., thank you. Well, thank you again so much to CRE 360 partners, Sam and Kevin for a great presentation., and thank you again to everyone who joined today's virtual series as well., as Sam just mentioned, we'll be sharing the recording with registered members, and as always, all pass recordings are available on our website.
Thank you again for today's discussion, and we hope to see you all again soon. Bye-bye. Thanks a lot.
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