if people don't know, the theme of shorting B&M and shopping centre REIT's is a huge hedge fund theme these days.

can't see shopping centres imploding as being anything like the sub-prime crisis in terms of an unwind.

i saw an expert suggest 70% of malls will close. and i check the number that i didn't have it backwards i.e. 30% survive....... have to see his definition of mall but that has to be old traditional department store anchored........ malls anchored by grocery store, drug store, wal-mart etc. should be fine.

do people think wal-mart is a huge short? i'm thinking there's a huge need for wal-mart no matter how big a.com gets or how many dollar stores are out there......

Has anyone done any research into SPG?

A quick glance at their ratings seems to suggest most analysts think this retail downturn is either temporary and won't really blow them up.

Only became aware of them because of ZeroHedge.... yea i know...

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-0...-generate-cash

Malls occupy a massive amount of prime real estate. yes they will get hurt badly due to online shopping and disposable income but the live shopping experience will not disappear either. it will evolve. technology changes behavior but people arent going to completely isolate themselves either

The malls are usually placed strategically and/or communities have developed around them. although they can get hurt really bad, I wouldn't bet on an implosion. A sensible trend has already started. Cities are changing their land use plans to make shopping centers a transportation hub as well as adding a residential component. Owning these parcels of land that get rezoned for multiple residential towers will make stagnant rent and some vacancy look like a joke. This is a trend that will continue as land becomes scarce, city planners focus on efficiency, and run down shopping areas place pressure on the planners for change that give the community a face lift

here's an example. you can look at various mall projects on this site. http://www.shapeproperties.com/our-places/city-lougheed

I don't know much about walmart but apart from the B&M vs online shopping trends and disposable income, I would look at what property they own vs lease

1 bedroom condos close to major subway stops go for about 300-400kcdn.

People can afford housing the same way people afforded housing in previous generations - you move to the suburbs around the city. The city limits go a bit further out, but so does public transit.

But even if for some reason a person refuses to commute (as every generation has before) and refuses to live anywhere other than the most expensive city in the country (lol compromise), they can STILL rent houses in the city for very reasonable prices. It's not really the price of housing that's skyrocketed as much as it is the price of land. A 1.5m house in the city can often be rented for as little as $2,500/m.

There's no housing crisis. There're just always going to be people who're frustrated because other people have more than them, and then there're politicians who're some combination of incompetent and corrupt who'll do whatever they can to stay in power. In ontario at the moment that happens to be the liberal party. Wynne I suspect is just really dumb and taking advice from the wrong people.

Wait, you believe that for real? Have you seen the debt to disposable income ratios? Or the % of household income spent on housing? I don't care what ratio you want to use, it's incredibly troubling.

i concur.. no housing crisis yet.

i would think vancouver will be ok as it's severely land-constrained, every affluent chinese person (30mm+) want to move there - full or part-time - and it's basically the only temperate climate in canada - most canadians can't move to usa.

toronto i'm not so sure about. it's r/e market is way way up in very short order. i saw the G&M had a big article where a r/e agent said there are 12-20 reasons why the market has gone nuts and then didn't mention one. i can't think of 1 other than asians either who speculate or pissed off at bc real estate tax focussed on toronto instead. basically caused a short-term pop and then you have panic, causing more buying.

the one poster is probably right that doing mortgage finance on condo's is probably the new renting. i can't even remember a rental-only old style apartment building being built.

i have no idea about toronto but $350-400k strikes me as very light for a condo these days. and then whatever mortgage payments you come up with you will have maintenance fees and property tax.

That's not a housing crisis - in the most generous interpretation that's an income crisis. The cost of producing housing is lower than it's ever been, land is plentiful in Ontario and we have a very accommodating public transit system. There're tons of affordable options for people making even minimum wage.

The only reason people are talking about this is because it puts wealth inequality on display for everyone to see. And if you want to have more compassion for the poor and throw them a bone that's reasonable (though toronto is already pretty generous to the poor). Rent controls in particular though is just completely indefensible... both a highly inefficient transfer of wealth, and contributes to long term housing supply issues.

To the point of the original thread,

As the old generation dies out I'd be betting on it failing even harder. In 20-30 years basically all consumers will be net savvy. Clothing is one of the only things that you can really justify keeping because people have to try the clothes on but even that has limited appeal since once you find stuff you like, you can just go online and get the same thing over and over. And with limitless competition people will be accustomed to paying so close to the actual cost of producing these thing that there's no way you can justify paying rent. Malls will progressively become a luxury market of high end goods for people who want the full service treatment.

Which, if you think about it, in part explains why people are paying a larger percent of their income on housing. Technology has made everything else so much less expensive that they can now justify splurging on luxury high rise condos.

Abba, i agree with much of your point and i didn't think canada/toronto had a housing crisis until recently.

but toronto is up so much in such a short period of time. and the last 3-5 years has seen so many rental horror stores. media might be flaming the latter.

i do think you are absolutely correct that the new housing/income crisis does expose haves vs. have-nots........ and it's going to get much worse as i sense it is getting much much harder for a family to do its fall-back - rent a 2 or 3 bedroom apartment in mid-town toronto for $1500 a month.... also not good at all for those with undocumented income, which is huge.

one thing i think about vancouver particularly and toronto to some extent is that nobody seems to think that the common person - i'm one - has the inalienable right to live in decent housing in central manhattan, london, san francisco, hong kong etc.. but in vancouver that idea definitely lives even though zoning is terrible - giant lots in big parts of half the proper city- and wealthy immigration is massive .

this is completely anethma to most people but i think younger people in vancouver should just move to kelowna, kamloops, squamish - getting expensive -, salmon arm etc.

i agree.. in some ways, clothing works really well on the internet. generally the sites have every color/size/variant of a clothing line whereas your local shopping scene is "hit and miss". also, full easy-ish returns in usa so some people order 4 different pairs intending on keeping one - i don't like that....

a real world example. bot this faux leather perry ellis men's jacket at giant bargain chain here in canada and i love it. i go to a.com and put in men's faux leather jacket in the search bar and there are literally hundreds of different listings and some are by brand-name designers with all sizes/many colors and some of them as cheap as $19.99 and available.... i'm a huge bargain shopper when i visit usa but driving 20 miles through urban traffic to tour BCF's and kohl's becomes mentally exhausting very fast. can't beat a bunch of super-nice $400 sports coats for $19.99 though. even $9.99 but that was once only....

or bought a custom recommended pair of running shoes from running store recently but now i have the names of their recommended shoes and i can get them online. i think that's a good compromise. i buy from B&M for first purchase and then online for replacements. and then often i will have to go back in a couple of years and get new recommendation so the helpful B&M gets another list price sale and the cycle starts again

I used to be skeptical about buying shoes online because fit is so important. But after doing it once now I have only bought shoes online over the past several years. Only once have I had to return for improper fit. Once you have a brand/style you like you know how they will likely fit. I stick with brands I know (New Balance, Converse and Clarks) and they always fit me perfectly. The selection online is incomparable to that in the local shoe store or even the entire mall. I walk 10+ miles per day and go through shoes quickly and for me the selection online is too good to bypass.

mrbaseball, your earlier comment was the one that put in my head the idea that selection is unbelievable on the internet.

especially nice if you don't live in giant city or you live in canada - and pick up at parcel service just across usa border

FWIW, I'm very bearish on easily converting malls to housing. It's probably easier to demolish the whole thing versus retrofit everything you'd need to (starting with plumbing as the big need) only to end with a bunch of windowless units.

I believe the future is too complicated to predict because the human brain isn't powerful enough to process all of the variables to any degree of accuracy, but with that said, I love to think about it Feel free to bash me if you want, but this is just my random thought I've had this year and it's super naive/new to me so might have a glaring hole I missed.


I think housing prices in major cities is going to COLLAPSE once the vast majority of people use self driving cars. Not only will transportation times be way quicker (no more slow drives in the fast lane, no more waiting for some idiot to stop texting when the light turns green)...but there will be less accidents, speed limits can increase dramatically, and no more road rage as you can just sit and play video games in your car while you head home. (plus the efficiency of merging and intersections will skyrocket reducing traffic congestion tremendously)

Here's why I think that. In my city you can buy 9 acres for $3.5 mill (I know I know in your city it's way higher). Or you can drive 45 minutes away and buy 20 acres for $80K (again, I know I know, lol Idaho). Here's the thing, if you got rid of traffic, upped the speed limits from 55 to 85, and let me play video games while I rode in my car, not only would it take ~12 minutes instead of 55ish, but I would have fun for those 12 minutes).


I think self driving cars will allow people to spread out. And while big cities like New York will still have everyone on top of each other (some people just like living that way) other cities like Spokane/Seattle/others will have prices collapse as people "spread out" to the cheap and still easy to get to the "countryside."


(again, feel free to bash, it's a random idea I came up with that I'm sure many others have thought of before me, but it's my prediction...it will kill malls as people will shop online + not mind traveling around to random locations as travel will be much easier, so they won't demand everything be "all together" like it is nowadays)

To add to your self driving car theory I believe most people will eventually telecommute. No reason for even jumping in the self driving car to get to the office. Everything will eventually be decentralized. Cities and population centers will be less and less important.

I'd be watching housing real close now in Canada. The combo of what happened with Home Capital Group, combined with Trump sacking NAFTA and the probably inflationary spike it produces...seems like a nice start to some trouble...

additionally it may open significant portions of land from less need for parking and more efficient car flow. once cities recognize the clear need for changes in regulation on new developments it could transform cities entirely, it's tough to imagine exactly what this might look like and perhaps different cities will transform in very different ways

and agree on telecommuting being a major factor as well. it was hyped up so much years ago that some people have written it off as something that will never cause real major change but it will just continue to transform industry after industry

Why is a condo in the city the fallback? Rent a flat. Rent a basement apartment of things are really looking dire. Rent a large house and split it up with close friends or family. Condos in toronto are generally high end units, at least in part because of rent controls that discouraged builders from making rental buildings. Are you also outraged that you can't live in a penthouse at yorkville?

Safe housing isn't the same as luxury condos. Why do you think the go-trains exist, if not to accommodate people who want to live in more affordable areas? I know people who make a lot of money who choose to live on the outskirts not out of financial need but because they want to retire earlier, and so are saving aggressively.

The cost of living is just so ****ing low if you're actually trying to make things work. Should my heart bleed for people because they think taking a heated bus with free wifi is an unacceptable burden? Should I be kept up at night because someone working an entry level retail job thinks living in a basement apartment is beneath them?

Regarding SDCs, I could argue the other way too though. Once I don't need to park my car somewhere overnight because I am using the cheap SDC service, a lot more dense city options become attractive.

it's interesting.... i wonder what % of people would rather live in a cool condo downtown vs. semi-affluent distant suburbs if you make many basic assumptions in comparing. i guess the problem is no one would agree on the assumptions.

i think for all but twenty somethings that living downtown in a cramped unit is basically a necessary evil... richard florida from university of toronto would disagree. and yes, that is his last name.

abba, i agree with much of what you said... i guess living in vancouver has made me jaded. here we have a crisis of not being able to rent basement apartments. the emigration here is unbelievable - foreign and domestic - and there's no land nor jobs to support the housing prices.

i think toronto to some degree is just more like many big usa cities. vancouver has soooo many special factors - btw, i'm not huge vancouver fan, i liked living in winnipeg just as much if not more.

https://www.thestar.com/business/201...o-survive.html

wow, retail dying in canada too......... canada hasn't really been amazon-ized at all. and same for other online retail

those look like horrible malls........... i think alot of older malls will be toast....

another thing that surprises me. i live where it is really really rain in winter. not that cold though but definitely a semi-real winter........ anyway, we had a new outdoor, village type mall built and it is wildly popular. stores aren't that special but i think people want to be outside for a few minutes each day. lots of coffee shops.

Maybe it just comes down to your family situation. Living in a dense area with a wife and kids sounds difficult.

I've thought about both these quite a bit and totally agree. Young, single, adults are still going to have reason to live in more urban centers but the suburbs should pretty drastically flatten out when commuting to work is either via SDC or more likely TELE. The difference between being 15 miles from a major city or 60 miles from a major city should become dramatically lessened. My question would be the effect this would have on K-12. Are kids whose parents live in these extra decentralized suburbs going to be telecommuting to school? SDC busses? More prevalent home schooling with assistance from AI?

Sears and Kmart died because of Walmart, Target, Home Depot and Lowes

Certain chain super markets are closing because in every WalMart and Target there is a supermarket.

Specialty retail in small modern strip malls is cannibalizing the traditional indoor malls.

The internet takes a larger and larger shares every year of commodity/brand goods.

Its a redistribution not a contraction.