Is strip mall or retail shopping center a good investment?

If you are interested in retail commercial properties ( shopping centers, malls, ..... ) and think they are cheap now, you may want to think twice. In short, the macro trend does not support the future of the retail commercial properties.

This article below from The New York Times tells well.

How About Gardening or Golfing at the Mall?

Some highlights: 

* While malls have faced problems in the past, the Internet is now pulling even more sales away from them.

* Near-record vacancy rates at malls of all kinds, both the big enclosed ones and the sprawling strips.

* Most cities, looking at shrinking budgets, cannot afford to subsidize or knock down ailing malls.

* Schools, medical clinics, call centers, government offices and even churches are now standard tenants in malls.

* The vacancy rate at shopping centers and strip malls was 11 percent in the last quarter of 2011, the highest level since 1991, according to the research firm Reis.

Crisis will be postponed again!

Marc Faber, Gloom, Boom and Doom Report editor/publisher, said in the following CNBC interview below.

“The end crisis will be postponed until the sovereigns go bankrupt,” Faber said. “They can postpone the end-game endlessly…say another five to 10 years. Each money-printing exercise brings about unintended consequences. These unintended consequences are higher inflation rates than had no money been printed.”

“I think I’m very constructive and I’m a great optimist in life. Otherwise I would commit suicide in view of the kind of governments we have nowadays. For sure they will take wealth away from the well-to-do people one way or the other, and from the middle class they will take it away through inflating the economy and lowering the standard of living.”

“If the Chinese bubble bursts one day, which inevitably will happen — maybe not tomorrow, maybe in three months, maybe in three years — when it happens it will have devastating consequences for the global economy.”