25% of U.S. malls are expected to shut within 5 years. Giving them a new life won’t be easy

KEY POINTS

• Coresight Research estimates 25% of America’s roughly 1,000 malls will close over the next three to five years. 

• The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated a demise that was already underway. 

• “Just because retail space has gone vacant or remained fallow does not mean that it is automatically a good candidate for repurposing into industrial space,” Moody’s Analytics real estate analyst Victor Calanog said. 

• According to data pulled by Moody’s Analytics REIS, apartment development in the U.S. is expected to be down 15.6% in a post-Covid-19 world. Office development is set to drop 10%, it said, while retail falls 15.7%. 

• Industrial development, meantime, is expected to pick up 3.6%.