What Customers Want? Amazon Knows

The impact of Amazon on the retail world hasn't been fully realized yet. And it may have nothing to do with same-day delivery by drone.

Mimms Enterprises' Tosh Wolfe says that Amazon's real trick is data. “They have decades of data on what the consumer wants and needs,” Tosh says. “As their technology improves and as they invest more in that technology… I think that they only scratched the surface on their ability to predict what the consumer wants.” (They're going to show up at your home unannounced with a garden hose and a copy of Hope Floats.)

And speaking of technology, Weingarten Realty's Keith Daigle told our audience of more than 200 at last week's fourth annual Atlanta Retail Real Estate Summit that it just signed a national contract with Comcast to provide high-speed network access at all its properties. Keith says in today's market, as retailers depend more and more on social media, landlords need the systems in place for retailers.

Cooper Carry's Allen Dedels highlighted one of the biggest mixed-use projects his company is undertaking—from a design standpoint, at least. As we broke the news here, The Jacoby Group has begun work on One Daytona, a massive mixed-use project across from the Daytona International Speedway in Florida. (You can already see Carl Edwards running over there before the race.) But Allen says Cooper Carry is now seeing more work as the economy warms. “We really started ramping up and getting more work, and it's both urban and suburban,” he says.

“It's a sellers market right now,” says Marcus & Millichap's Don McMinn, who says he's seeing huge demand for retail properties from investors. But the problem: There's a scarcity of inventory, which is compressing cap rates. “So we're seeing right now buyers are treating properties in tertiary markets like major metro areas,” he says. “That's unique and I think that's the symptom of the market we're in right now.”