By: Dennis Norman
Right before Christmas I did a 3 part series on malls and shopping centers in which I expressed my reluctance to shop at them and asked the question: is the mall going to go the way of the dinosaur? Unbeknownst to me at the time there may have been more relevance to that question than I realized based upon some facts cited in an article that came out this morning on the Boston Herald website.
In the article, Donna Goodison says “Burt P. Flickinger, managing director of New York consulting firm Strategic Resource Group, expects 2,000 to 3,000 U.S. malls and shopping center to close in March and April”. She goes on to state “General Growth Properties, Inc., the nation’s second-largest shopping mall owner, is already in trouble.” Now I’m not sure how many malls and Read more…
By: Dennis Norman
By now you may be asking yourself how my rant about malls relates to you, the real estate investor? It’s just to stress the fact that residential real estate is a good investment even when we are facing challenging times like the present. Sure, values may drop at times, like now, however since rents are not dropping the short term drop in value should not affect you as long as you are not in a postion where you HAVE to sell. Lower prices should just present more opportunity for you to expand your rental portfolio at a lower cost of entry than before (in the stock market world this is called “dollar cost averaging” and if it makes sense for stocks it should make sense for real estate in my opinion.
Additionally I think there are several other things that make investment in residential real estate attractive Read more…
By: Dennis Norman
When I left off in part one I had spent nearly 2 hours traversing through Chesterfield Mall but came up empty handed..I never did find the writing journal I was looking for. As I walked back to my car I couldn’t help but wonder why people would choose to shop at a mall. After-all, thanks to the Internet and Google, you can quickly and easily find practically anything you may want to buy on the Internet. Granted, the Internet has it’s shortcomings too….you do need to be cautious about who you are buying from and some large or heavy items may be cost prohibitive to buy due to shipping costs, but for an awful lot of things it works great. As I continued to think about all the online purchases I have made over the past couple of years and the very few rare visits I have made to retail stores and malls I couldn’t help wonder if, assuming I’m not the only one with these shopping habits, is the mall going to go the way of the dinosaur? Read more…
By: Dennis Norman
I do not like shopping malls. If you like them, don’t take this personal, I just don’t. I understand they are an excellent place for walking during inclimate weather, a good place to kill time or let kids burn off some excess energy but I just don’t think they are as good at their main purpose as they once were. This purpose of course being bringing shoppers together with retailers.
This year, as usual, I did all of my Christmas shopping online from the comfort of my home. Our family was leaving for a family Christmas trip prior to Christmas so it was imortant to order gifts in time to arrive before we left. Two days before we were to leave my wife mentioned to me she needed a new writing journal. I thought I was done shopping for her but decided to add this one last gift. Even though I was reluctant, due to the fact we were leaving town in two days I Read more…
