"Malls are dying" seems like a "the suit is back" sort of meme. I've literally been hearing this for 20+ years. And the mall near me seems busier than ever. Someone must be pushing this for some reason. People shorting mall real estate?
My guess is that they are collectively dying, but that the severity of symptoms is not evenly distributed.
You haven't been hearing it twenty years either. Some people were putting on this trade in the early 2010s but this trade really picked up around 2018/19, when it became apparent that the situation was irreparable. Before that point, the "smart trade" was long malls...most of these people got wiped out (Bill Ackman more than once in TGT than JCP, Lampert in Sears...the trade that worked in 2004 went to zero by 2014).
You can also look at countries which have higher online share of retail, they are further down this path. In the UK, these places are just being boarded up (retail parks, what you would call strip malls in the US are thriving however). One mall near me with tens of units traded for $200k, that was worth $10m a few years ago. The largest mall operator (which owns almost all the top 20 largest malls) is in BK.
But the easy money has been made. Yesterday's news. The money is in redeveloping/converting these places into mixed-use and offices.
Back in the year 2000, someone created the Deadmalls.com website:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadmalls.com
...just a few random items from DDG:
From 2000: "Retail Darwinism Puts Old Malls in Jeopardy"
"The fully enclosed shopping mall, that island of boxy chain stores and lost apostrophes in a sea of asphalt, was not born in California. But this seems to be the place where people are digging its grave, at least in its present form."
https://web.archive.org/web/20150527125625/https://www.nytim...
From 2001: "Dying shopping malls reborn as old-fashioned downtowns"
https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2001-12-12/article...
From 2003: "Malls: Death of an American icon"
https://web.archive.org/web/20030707142032/https://money.cnn...
Cory Doctorow was talking about dead malls in 2003:
https://boingboing.net/2003/04/19/dead-mall-contest-re.html
From 1998: "Enclosed malls losing luster as well as tenants"
"Mintz thinks the vacancies signal a deeper problem -- that malls are outdated and out of touch with the needs of today's shoppers."
https://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/stories/1998/02/09/st...
And it turns out there was a book published in 2002:
"Greyfields into Goldfields: Dead Malls become Living Neighborhoods"
https://www.amazon.com/Greyfields-into-Goldfields-become-Nei...
The suit may well have a stake through its heart on the west coast. It never died in the east coast mega-metrapolisis group from Wall Street/NYC and Washington DC setting the norms.
Similiarly suburban malls are generally either sickly at best or maybe a bunch of high end outlets /might/ survive or could go the way of strip malls in a few decades. Urban malls tend to be vibrant in comparison as the limited big box store viability means that if it isn't viable to do a particular store at street level retail small stores for whatever reason the mall is the perfect place to locate them.
It doesn't help that malls are practically designed to get old and decrepit - malls are built to a completed state - once one is built, it will never get "bigger, newer, and better", it will only get more and more older and "outdated". They weren't DESIGNED to be updated and last for decades.
A Hedge Fund Manager Who’s Shorting America’s Malls (2017)
...seems like 4 years is enough time to get a feel for things.
Original: https://www.wsj.com/articles/mall-short-seller-shuts-down-be...
Different fund who raked it in: https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a34785141/shopping-mal...
Many malls in nearby towns are filing bankruptcy.
We know that when a mall loses its anchor tenants its demise accelerates as its smaller retailers depend on the anchor tenants to pull in foot traffic. It's a doom feedback cycle.
They're definitely not surviving as they did in the 70s - 00s
where are malls dying?