Brookfield approaching pre-pandemic traffic

Bloomberg has reported that mall owner Brookfield Property Partners says that their mall traffic is almost back to pre-pandemic levels. Brookfield happens to be one of the largest mall owners in America, and also the owner of Manhattan’s Brookfield place, which has become a cornerstone of luxury retail in Manhattan.

Brookfield said sales at its retail properties were approaching “normalized level” in the third quarter, some even surpassing year-earlier benchmarks. Customer traffic has been as much at 70 percent of normal levels at Brookfield’s malls, and all tenants have reopened their stores. Luxury goods and jewelry are performing particularly well with sales 26 percent higher than last year’s third quarter.

Despite Brookfield being able to turnaround their financial performance, as consumers move to shopping online more that begs what the future purpose of a mall could be. Coronavirus accelerated the shift to more consumers shopping online, but, at the same time, there is also pent up demand for people to be able to shop in-person since it was denied to them for months.

However, despite mall traffic being up, Bloomberg reported that Brookfield only collected 75 percent of rent due from its mall tenants, and is operating a 135 million dollar net loss for Q3. Rent collections aren’t expected to recover until Q4.

Brookfield is also looking at shedding some of its malls as some them are now worth less than their mortgages. There is the potential for Brookfield to have over properties to lenders or restructure the debt.

photo: via brookfieldpropertiesretail.com