CoStar reported that 374 retail buildings with 6,635,287 square feet of retail space were delivered to the market in the first quarter, with 27,365,608 square feet still under construction at the end of the quarter. Over the past four quarters, developers have delivered 36,069,059 square feet of retail space in U.S.
CoStar estimates that developers will deliver 27.8 million square feet of space in 2011—by far the lowest amount going back to 1982.
Last year’s figure of 43.3 million square feet had been the previous low. In fact, prior to 2010, the industry had never delivered less than 100 million square feet of new space in a year. The two low years prior to 2010 and 2011 were 2009 (110.5 million square feet) and 1982 (110.6 million square feet). The peak years for deliveries were 2006 (245.9 million square feet) and 2007 (242.9 million square feet).
Source: CoStar Property
