We have not seen anything yet. Many more retail locations/chains will go under after disasterous holiday sales season. There are empty storefronts everywhere now. These are non-performing assets. When additional millions of square ft. get added to this mix, property owners/REIT's will be unable to service their debt loads. The coming crash in commercial real estate will make the residential one look like a walk in the park. The entire sector is way overbuilt.

i am not sure what the long term plan was for JCPenney...i was an employee of that company back in 200 and the beggining of 2001 ...that company saw a closing of some of its stores...to the tune of 45 stores nationwide....all in all they are an excellent company to work for...at that time the 401 k plan that they had in place was re invested into the company...something that i think a lot more companys should look into if it allready isnt in place

So how many stores opening in 2008?  Leave it to the gloom and doom MEDIA here in the proudest, richest nation in the world to set the pace with nothing but negative news. I would really love to know how many stores did open across the states in 2008.....This is a number that the media doesn't focus on, instead they litter our TV's, computers, and news papers with nothing positive to say at all. A recession deepens without confidence.  Shouldn't the media be projecting the positives that are going on in our country and stop focusing in on every single piece of bad news?  Imagine if the media (as sorry as they are) were to brighten our days with positive, consumer confidence building news.......WOW WHAT A THOUGHT. I was at a local chamber event just yesterday and the focus was on how strong our local economy is and the entire meeting was POSITIVE!!! I left the meeting feeling good and proud to be in a great community. Hell I even went out and did some Christmas shopping and helped strengthen our local economy even more. Imagine if our airwaves were not filled with negative, negative, negative.... People might become more positive. WHAT IF

Keep it up American Media and this will be the worst of times no doubt.

sage2123 you are correct!!!! What I am waiting for is when the idiotic elected officials running the city/county/schools budgets. What is going to happen to there portions of real estate taxes when they go to figure out future budgets.Are they going to increase the budgets or are they going to cut expenses. With overall property values going down they can only increase the mil rate but by what %. So the public goes from spending a large portion of there disposable income on gas to real estate taxes. If people are having a hard time making mortgage payments now, what is going to happen when they get a notice telling them the escrow is going up exponentailly. This is hundreds of dominos set up over the course of many years of piss poor management of many sectors in the economy and we are only in the beginning of the cascade of knocking them all down. This is a major long term problem in many industries which nobody really wants to solve if it costs them. The auto industry is the perfect example.

It is a transition for the typical brick and mortar retailers which started once the internet became a reasonable and some what trust worthy place to conduct trade. Americans have a deep additiction to the inexpensive over building a longterm local retail relationship.

It would be wonderful to be able to get off this merry go round global trading space and get back to local or regional ones. However, the politics of the moment praise the ideals of trade without borders because it offers a better chance for growing the economy.   Thus increasing the size of the pie for taxing purposes, rather than requiring a bigger slice of the pie.

The ICSC (Internation Council of Shopping Centers) has a report floating around saying there could be up to 150,000 stores that will close next year. That is very bad, but even as this is occuring there are still chains opening new stores. The media needs to be sensitive to the fact they can create the news if they hype the bad news too much. People should plan for a rough economy for at least the next 24 months. It is going to get worse before it gets better but we can work through this with good leadership and common sense, but we have to get our spending under control.

Stan

Steve K & Stanley - I certainly have plenty of bones to pick with the media, and agree that excessive doom & gloom is a problem.  However, I do not believe it is possible to over-hype the situation we are in now.  In fact, we need more light shed on the situation.  I believe that not nearly enough people are focused on the scope of the problems and refuse to face reality.  There is a big difference between being negative and being stupid.  For those paying attention, the problems were obvious and the resession was called as far back as December last year when it actually started.  By August, the problems were glaring, but still not much "facing of reality".  After quarterly 401K staements went out in October, more people did start paying attention & the closer you look, the worse things are.

Regarding how many stores opened this year vs how many closed, it is not even close.  The big question, however, is how many will open next year.  Almost none is the answer.  I am a middleman, and my customers are major chains.  We have almost zero visibility going forward, and we are typical of what the vendor community is facing - no orders.

Steve and Stanley. How many stores do you think opened? As I look around my community that answer is pretty much....none. Is yours different? I'd love an ouce of your optimism...

The exagerate property taxe was the beginning about strangling economy.

A part of people could'nt change their car , the ohers going to the foreclosure not because of the mortgage itself, but because of the property taxes.

and in 2008 the overprice gas at the pump, finally made realize consumers that V8 and unnecessary big 4x4 was a waste of money and even at 1.65$ the gallon the fair is finished for the carmakers.have a nice week end.  

I use to laugh when heard people on TV tell everybody to save more and spend less, not because it was bad advise it was good advise, but because if everybody followed it the economy would collapse - I'd advise people they should only use credit on things that make them money, save them money or that they desperately need- a business, a house, or a car you need for work, that makes sense. Using credit for every want is crazy. This not only applies to individuals but to to our country as well, huge amounts of money has been spent with little if any return, this money should have been spent on infrastructure, energy independence , and increasing our human capital by improving education and health.