After a home run in December, retailers had another strong month in January. ICSC, Retail Forward, Retail Metrics and RetailSails have all crunched the numbers from the publicly-traded retailers that report same-stores sales and the figures show that the post-holiday shopping period went well for most firms.

Retail Forward, Retail Metrics and RetailSails concluded that same-store sales jumped 3.3 percent in the month while ICSC’s figures showed a 3.0 percent improvement. The numbers were slightly better than December’s result and made January the best month for retailers since July 2008 or April 2008, depending on whose numbers you look at.

ICSC’s tally shows that same-store sales rose 3.0 percent in January, the fourth time in five months that ICSC’s index has risen. The result was a slight increase from the 2.8 percent rise in December. ICSC expects retailers to post about a 2 percent gain in February. more

It seems like every couple of days there’s a new burst of articles on the state of commercial real estate. At one extreme, you have stories breathlessly running off one or two metrics that show that commercial real estate is going to destroy the economy. A common one is the Deutsche Bank figure that up to 65 percent of the $1.4 trillion in commercial mortgages coming due by 2013 will have trouble getting refinanced.

That works out to just more than $900 billion. It sounds terrifying. But let’s put that into a little perspective. The pain is being spread out over four years. (And that assumes none of these loans will get extended, which has not been what we’ve seen so far.) Remember, as well, that the idea is that those loans will have “trouble” getting refinanced, more

Cushman & Wakefield announced this morning that Glenn Rufrano has been named President and CEO of the company. Rufrano, who will also be appointed to the company’s board of directors, will join the firm March 22 following the completion of his tenure as CEO of Centro Properties Group.

Rufrano has had quite a run this past decade or so. He became CEO of New Plan Excel in 2000 when that firm was struggling a bit and through a series of shrewd dispositions and acquisitions and restructuring of its operations turned it into one of the largest and most successful shopping center REITs in the U.S. He spun that success into a deal where New Plan was absorbed by Australian limited property trust Centro Properties Group in early 2007. That acquisition–as well as the credit crunch–eventually got Centro into hot water because of the debt it took out in growing quickly.

In 2008, Rufrano was named Centro’s CEO and was successfully able to reach agreements with creditors that have enabled the firm to focus on operations. It’s in a much better place today. Rufrano was also tapped to serve on General Growth’s board of directors to help in its bankruptcy.

You also got the sense that Rufrano, after spending a lot of time in Australia the last couple of years, was looking to return home. He already has a replacement lined up at Centro. And he made some comments at a panel at the ICSC New York National Conference and Dealmaking that made it sound like he was ready to make a move. I thought he might become even more involved in General Growth. The move over to heading a large brokerage is an interesting twist. But so far, Rufrano has compiled a stellar track record.

Rufrano replaces Bruce Mosler, who became Cushman’s co-chairman of the board on January 1, 2010.

Target Corp. talked about its plan for the next five to 10 years. The initiatives including spending $1 billion on store renovations, opening smaller stores and expanding into markets including Canada, Mexico or South America. In addition, it is planning on only opening 10 new stores on a net basis in 2010.

But Chairman and Chief Executive Gregg Steinhafel said ahead of a meeting with analysts that Target will apply “the same rigorous financial discipline” in the reforms that have ensured strong returns and prudent use of capital in the past.

In November, the company had warned it could have difficulty meetings analysts’ fiscal fourth-quarter earnings expectations, which were for $1.12 a share at the time. Its third-quarter earnings rose 18%, snapping a streak of eight quarterly declines, as the discount retailer saw profitability improve in both its retail and credit-card operations.

The remodeling, which is meant to boost growth in same-store sales, will include more grocery selections and changes in layout and new merchandise.

For more on the plans, there are stories at the Wall Street Journal, Business Week and the Financial Times.

One of the emerging stories in retail real estate is that healthy retailers are making moves to grab prime locations that have opened up in urban markets. This is especially true of big box players. A few years ago, cities were blocking these efforts. There were talks of legislation to block big-box construction in some places. You don’t hear any of that anymore. It seems that what’s worse than big-box stores in urban locations is having vacant storefronts. As a result, we’ll see more of these kinds of deals take place.

For example, in Chicago Target is reportedly scoping the historic Carson Pirie Scott & Co. building on State Street as a new store. Similarly, in New York, Nordstrom, which is opening a Nordstrom Rack location in Union Square, is looking at another site on Fifth Avenue.

Here are some other news and notes about retail real estate from over the weekend.

• 24/7 Wall Street has prepared a roundup of 35 large retail companies to see which had the largest fall-offs in same-store sales in 2009 as a way of seeing what chains might be closing stores this year.


• Cabela’s is supposed to be one of the main attractions of the Meadowlands Xanadu project in northern New Jersey. But the firm’s CEO said last week that the store is “highly unlikely” to ever open. Construction on most of that project’s superstructure seems to be completed. But there’s no indication when–if ever–it’s going to open. Amazing.


• Sears’ latest strategy to boost its sales includes ramping up its online sales efforts.


• Seeking Alpha asks “Malls: All Bad or an Opportunity?” The post takes a look at the outlooks of several mall and outlet REITs.


• Moody’s latest look at CMBS delinquencies shows that defaults continued to rise in December.


• Square Feet blog does a nice job explaining how real estate receivers work.

Yahoo’s Tech Ticker posted a compilation of clips of different interviews they did with Howard Davidowitz in 2009. Howard’s someone Retail Traffic talks to as well partly because he’s doesn’t try to sugar coat anything. He tells you what he really thinks.

According to the Commerce Department, retail sales were negative in December. This is much bleaker data than the same-store sales comps that came out a week ago. The decline was not what economists had expected. Sales were expected to rise 0.5 percent according to economists surveyed by Marketwatch.

The only silver lining here is that retail trade sales were up 5.9 percent over last year. So this December did mark an improvement over last year’s disastrous holiday shopping season. However, a look at business breakout reveals that the types of retailers that shopping center owners rely on had the weakest performance. The best year-over-year seasonally adjusted performers were gasoline stations (+33.6 percent), nonstore retailers (+10.6 percent) and auto and other motor vehicle dealers (+7.6%).

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for December, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $353.0 billion, a decrease of 0.3 percent (±0.5%)* from the previous month, but 5.4 percent (±0.5%) above December 2008. Total sales for the 12 months of 2009 were down 6.2 percent (±0.2%) from 2008. Total sales for the October through December 2009 period were up 1.9 percent (±0.3%) from the same period a year ago. The October to November 2009 percent change was revised from +1.3 percent (±0.5%) to +1.8 percent (±0.2%).

Retail trade sales were down 0.2 percent (±0.5%)* from November 2009, but 5.9 percent (±0.5%) above last year. Gasoline stations sales were up 33.6 percent (±1.5%) from December 2008 and nonstore retailers sales were up 10.3 percent (±1.7%) from last year.

But why were the numbers so far off? Economist Dean Baker had a post up briefly here that seems to be gone now that said economists don’t account for a bias in same-store sales metrics when thinking about retail sales. Moreover, he points out that the December numbers showed a weak result in the general merchandise sector, which isn’t a great sign for retail real estate.

He explains:

The big culprit in this drop was the general merchandise sector (department stores and Wal-Mart), which had a 0.8 percent drop. The likely reason that many economists missed this drop is that they continue to ignore the same store sale bias. There are many fewer stores this year than last. This means that even if overall sales were constant, sales in same stores would rise. This bias will gradually disappear as we move forward and the comparison month in the previous year looks worse, but for now it is still substantial.

Calculated Risk’s monthly take is here.

Click for larger image

Industry activity is picking up again. There’s been a noticeable rise in the number of stories about retail real estate and retailers in recent days. With retailers, the post-holiday shopping strategic decisions about store openings and closings have begun. And there’s another round of those sorts of announcements in today’s links, among others.

• Bloomberg wrote a report on a recent study from Barclays that shows that life insurers have largely avoided the losses tied to commercial real estate mortgages and CMBS. Life insurers, it seems, did not get swept up in the euphoria of the boom. Their lending volumes fell or stayed flat and they didn’t get as loose with underwriting standards. That conservatism is now paying off in spades. They were equally conservative in how they invested in CMBS, staying away from the riskiest bits.


• Walmart announced that its Sam’s Club chain will close 10 locations. Trans World Entertainment is also closing stores. Trans World is closing 137 stores this quarter and expects to end the year with 553 stores nationwide.


• New York & Company, meanwhile, has its eyes on expansion. The chain plans to roll out 20 to 25 outlet stores in response to a successful pilot program it had been running with one outlet-based location. Also in the expansion game is Chick-fil-A which intends to open 78 new stores in 2010.


• RetailSails posted results of the first week of post holiday sales. Activity was down a bit resulting in a bit of a lull for retailers.


• There’s a lot of talk about commercial real estate being a “train wreck.” But according to the Wall Street Journal, commercial real estate was a gravy train for Bank of America last year thanks to its involvement in public real estate equity offerings. The bank booked more than $200 billion in revenue on such deals last year.


• Our news analysis this week looks at a trio of succession planning stories at U.S. retail real estate firms. Australian limited property trust Centro Properties Group also has a change at the top. There, Robert Tsenin is replacing Glenn Rufrano as the firm’s global CEO. Rufrano has been lauded for the job he did in taking over as CEO amid Centro’s major credit issues and finding a solution with banks that has enabled the firm to focus on property operations. He’s also now on General Growth’s board. That might be something to keep an eye on.

This is a re-post from one of my favorite commercial real estate blogs–David Stejkowski’s The Dirt Lawyer’s Blog.

It’s a rumination on commercial real estate blogs. There are some out there. I have many linked in my blogroll down in the right column. I’ve been blogging here at TrafficCourt since late 2006 and definitely seen some blogs come and go and waited for robust commercial real estate blog culture to develop. There are definitely some quality blogs out there including the ones David mentions in this post. I read the posts and follow the Twitter feeds of many of these bloggers and learn a lot in the process.

However, one of the things that I believe hurts us more