Retail real estate should see little change amid oil slump

Buildings that house shops, restaurants and grocery stores are poised to withstand the ongoing OIL PRICE crunch better than any other sector of the commercial real estate market, according to a report from national property services firm CBRE.

What will help them the most is a limited supply of available space, compared with the building boom that's occurred in other segments of the MARKET.

Over the past few years, shopping center developers had been elbowed out by office and apartment developers who could pay much higher prices for land.

In retrospect, that turned out to be a good thing for owners of shopping centers.

Retail space has hit a record-high occupancy rate of 93.4 percent, according to the CBRE report. It's even higher for so called Class A space, such as the Galleria, Sugar Land Town Center or MARKET Street in The Woodlands.

Read full story: Retail real estate should see little change amid oil slump