It has already been said many times that the age of e-commerce is now well and truly starting to show as we are seeing big retail chains starting to twitch. The footfall that was once seen inside malls in different parts of the world has greatly reduced. This means that the cost of maintenance has exceeded that of sales. Talking about malls, which have a lot of retail stores under one hood, we know that they are suffering badly. While there is still hope for retail store owners, the malls have been dying lately.
And we have one of the biggest casualties from Canada as the second-biggest pension fund provider of Canada, Caisse de Depot is going to sell one-third of the malls that they have in possession. This decision has been taken on the back of e-commerce which is now hurting the Canadian retailers. It is also reported that Caisse de Depot owns 25 malls in Canada which means more than 8 of them will be closed very soon.
Caisse de Depot has said that its 25 malls caused them to decline 2.7% in value of real estate portfolio last year which is why they are looking to offload one-third of those properties. Apart from selling the malls, Caisse de Depot also says that transforming the malls to residential spaces or logistics space is also on the card if a sale doesn’t go through.
The firm added that “Canada had been relatively protected but global trends are accelerating and are hitting us too, When you have 25 shopping centers, it’s a big amount — even if it changes just a little bit, it has a great impact immediately in terms of figures”.
The concern for mall owners is not only in the vastly reduced footfall but also to make sure that their property is filed with rent-paying tenants since they are also backing out due to poor sales.
