About a month ago, the National Retail Federation came out with their annual Holiday Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, conducted by BIGresearch. According to the survey, consumers were going to spend $832.36 apiece–a 1.9 percent increase from $816.69 in 2007.

Today, however, America’s Research Group comes along with much bleaker prediction–$431. And it’s not like the numbers from last year are that different. Last year, the ARG survey projected $859 per person.

I have no idea which of these surveys has a better track record, but that’s a fairly massive difference in results.

The Emerging Trends in Real Estate released today by the Urban Land Institute and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP indicates the bleakest picture for commercial real estate since the early 1990s. You can download the report here.

We’ll have a more detailed look at this survey–specifically what it says about retail real estate–in our newsletter tomorrow. For now, you can Reuters’ account.

U.S. commercial real estate in 2009 will face its worst year since the industry’s depression of the early 1990s, according to a leading survey of industry investors, developers, lenders and consultants.

Commercial real estate values likely will drop significantly, foreclosures and delinquencies will increase sharply and property cash flows will fall, according to the 2009 edition of Emerging Trends in Real Estate, released on Tuesday by the Urban Land Institute and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.

“Many property owners are drowning in debt, lenders are not lending, and for many (industry professionals), property income flows are declining,” said Stephen Blank, ULI senior resident fellow for real estate finance. “There is an unprecedented avoidance of risk. Only when financing gets restructured will pricing reconcile, giving the industry a point from which to start digging out of this hole.”

Torto Wheaton Research has put a special section on its site exploring the ramifications of the financial crisis on the commercial real estate industry.

CoStar has an excellent chart up along with a story analyzing store openings and closings. A must read.

On store closings, 36% of the CFOs surveyed and 57% of the top 100 retailers’ CFOs said they will have closed stores in 2008. However, suggesting the bulk of these closures are only in the normal course of business, only 33% of the top 100 said 2008 store closings would be up over 2007 — 50% said the number of closings would be about the same, while 17% said less stores would be closed.

On a more positive note, 77% of all CFOs and 67% of the top 100 CFOs, said their companies did not or would not reduce or delay store opening plans in 2008. However, continued credit market mayhem could have adverse impact on store expansion plans for the remainder of 2008 and into 2009, as 41% of CFOs said they had seen some tightening of credit from their lenders.

One hint of the impending likelihood of less stores being opened in 2009 is reflected in the table below; as most retailers have yet to share their 2009 store opening guidance with the public. Some retailers have already stated they would only open stores in 2009 that were signed off many months ago; this could be a trend we increasingly see as retailers announce 2009 store opening plans over the next three months.

ICSC just reported their monthly same-store sales figures. Retailers posted a 1.0 percent gain compared with the same period last year. Considering that a lot of retailers came in negative, this could have been worse. The pool of companies ICSC is pulling from is getting smaller as well. This month’s figures include 36 chains. This is reflective of the fact that many retailers have stopped reporting same-store sales figures.

Not surprisingly, the primary story retailers cited for the September sales weakness was the financial crisis and the economy. For example, Gottschalks’ chairman and CEO opined that its exceedingly weak “sales for September reflect[ed] the persistent challenges in the macroeconomic environment, which intensified due to unprecedented and mounting events in the financial markets. In light of these events,” consumers continued to be very cautious in spending. The best performing segments were the value and staples, which is a continuation of the underlying story.

Wholesale clubs had a collective increase of 7.4% in comparable-store sales in September 2007 versus the same period of the prior year, or up a solid 5.2% excluding fuel sales. The next best performing segment was from the drug stores. Its sales rose by 3.8% y/y in September 2007–about four times the industry average. Luxury stores posted the worst performance of the
sectors tracked, clearly reflecting the financial and economic worry among higher-income households.

In the retail sector, vacancy rates have climbed and rent increases have slowed for the past year. The vacancy rate at malls in the top 76 U.S. markets rose to 6.6% in the third quarter, up from 6.3% in the previous quarter, to its highest level since late 2001, according to Reis.

For strip centers and other open-air shopping venues, the vacancy rate climbed to 8.4% in the third quarter from 8.1% in the second quarter. That marks the highest rate since 1994, according to Reis. Meanwhile, retailers’ closures outpaced new leases by 2.8 million square feet in U.S. strip centers in the third quarter, the third consecutive quarterly net decline. It is the first nine-month period of so-called negative net absorption since Reis started tracking the data in 1980.

The combined vacancy rate for malls and strip centers in the third quarter was 8%, up from 7.8% in the second quarter. Vacancy tends to be higher in strip centers during economic slowdowns because they have more independent, local tenants, which are more vulnerable to drops in sales than are the national retailers found in malls.

Link.

Consumers who use more than one channel when shopping for goods overwhelmingly prefer to move from online to brick-and-mortar locations, according to a new study from IBM.

According to the study, 75% prefer to move from clicks to bricks when shopping, while 7% reverse the direction, looking at items in person before buying them online. Three percent look online before engaging a contact center. These figures held regardless of whether shoppers were based in the United States or the United Kingdom.

But while the online-to-contact center crowd may be small, it’s valuable. This group spends the most when making purchases, at least among U.S. based consumers. Within the U.K., the big spenders were those who moved from online to mobile channels.

Link.

The CMBS market may be frozen, but the level of outstanding commercial real estate debt continued to expand during the second quarter.

Commercial and multifamily mortgage debt outstanding rose 1.5% in the second quarter, to $3.44 trillion, the Mortgage Bankers Association reports, based on an analysis of the Federal Reserve Board Flow of Funds data.

Amid the current credit crunch turmoil, commercial and multifamily mortgage debt outstanding gained $51.3 billion from the first quarter of 2008. Multifamily mortgage debt outstanding alone grew to $875 billion, an increase of $16.3 billion or 1.9% from first quarter levels.

“Despite the persistent credit crunch, investors increased their holdings of commercial/multifamily mortgages in the second quarter,” says Jamie Woodwell, MBA’s Vice President of Commercial Real Estate Research. “The only major investor group to see a decline in their holdings was the commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) market, which has been most profoundly affected by the credit crunch. Other investor groups including commercial banks, life insurance companies, thrifts and the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) increased their holdings over the quarter.”

Standard & Poor’s announced the latest numbers on its commercial real estate indices. Retail prices are up 1.0 percent for the month and up 0.6 percent in the past 12 months.

The latest readings:

Standard & Poor’s announced the April results of its S&P/GRA Commercial Real Estate Indices. Retail was down 0.2 percent from March to April.

Previous posts on the S&P/GRA Indices can be found from August 21, July 25, June 18, May 21, April 22, March 18, January 22, January 2, November 28, September 18 and August 21.

I just linked to S&P’s latest numbers (through May) from earlier this week. Today, Moody’s has reported their latest (through June) and it shows a bit bleaker picture.

Commercial real estate prices continued to decline in June, according to Moody’s/REAL Commercial Property Price Indices, Moody’s Investors Service said Wednesday.

The index fell 3.3 percent from May, and was down 9.6 percent from the year-ago level.

June was the fourth consecutive month that the index declined, Moody’s said. The CPPI now stands 11.8 percent below its peak in October 2007.

The index is based on repeat sales of the same properties across the U.S. at different points in time.

All four property types measured by the index went negative during the second quarter, Moody’s said. The national industrial market saw the largest price drop, down 9.3 percent during the quarter. National apartment market prices fell 7.1 percent, while office prices slipped 5.9 percent and retail declined 4.6 percent.

Link.