Will be interested to see how this plays out locally.
'Never seen anything as catastrophic': Malls in Canada face massive hit as unpaid rent surges
(National Post/Bloomberg News, Doug Alexander, Apr 27 2020)
Canada’s malls are facing a wave of skipped rents and could see vacancy rates triple by year-end, with the coronavirus poised to leave its scars on a fragile retail sector long after the pandemic ends.
In the country’s enclosed regional malls — a category that includes Toronto’s Eaton Centre and Pacific Centre in Vancouver — only 20 per cent to 25 per cent of tenants paid rent in April, according to brokerage firm JLL Canada. Big box shopping centres and community strip malls took in only a little over half their expected rent.
“I’ve been in this business over 30 years and I have never seen anything as catastrophic or as impactful in a negative way in our business,” Tim Sanderson, who heads retail at JLL Canada, said in an interview. “It’s the mid-tier smaller-scale landlord that cannot make their mortgage payments to their lender that are going to be in trouble.”
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