September 16, 2026
Mall values rose 13 percent over the past year, more than double the gain across commercial real estate overall, according to real estate analytics firm Green Street. No other property sector came close.
That number invites a simple reading: malls recovered. The data does not support that reading on its own. Mall values still sit well below their peak from a decade ago, and the gain is concentrated among owners who did specific, identifiable work rather than spread evenly across the sector.
What is actually driving the gain
Three factors show up consistently in the properties that improved.
First, limited new supply. Few malls have been built in years, and roughly 200 have closed since 2008. The properties that remain face less competition for tenants than they did during the last decade’s oversupply.
Second, tenant mix. Owners who replaced vacant department stores with luxury retailers, restaurants such as Din Tai Fung, and entertainment venues drew traffic that online retail does not easily replicate. Simon Property Group, the largest U.S. mall owner, saw its stock pass its 2016 high in July and has outperformed the S&P 500 over the past year.
Third, capital investment. Owners who renovated ahead of the recovery are the ones capturing it. Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, which said four years ago it planned to exit the U.S. market, is now spending close to a billion dollars to take full control of two of its California and Washington properties, citing rent growth it has not seen since the early 2010s.
A property-level example
CBL Properties’ West County Center in St. Louis illustrates the shift at the asset level. In 2022, the 1.2 million square foot mall could not refinance. Three of its four prime restaurant spaces sat empty, vacancy was rising, and a nearby competing mall was drawing sales from one of its anchor tenants.
Three years later, tenant sales at the property have grown 13 percent. Nordstrom’s business improved after the competing location closed. Macy’s renovated its store. New tenants, including Cheesecake Factory and Urban Outfitters, are set to open this year. CBL expects to close a refinancing within 60 days.
The property did not benefit from a sector-wide tailwind alone. It changed.
What the skeptics still see
Not every investor is convinced the gain holds. Some note that entertainment and restaurant tenants, while effective at filling space today, are harder to replace than a department store if they close. Others argue the real value in a mall property is the land underneath it, not the retail operation running on top of it, and remain cautious about underwriting to current tenant sales.
Both views matter. A sector index describes an average. It does not describe the lease rollover risk, capital needs or tenant credit of a specific property.
What this means for valuation work
A 13 percent sector-wide gain cannot tell you what a specific mall is worth. That requires evaluating the property’s own tenant mix and lease terms, its capital improvement history and remaining needs, and the competitive retail supply in its trade area, rather than applying a national or sector average.
For owners preparing to refinance, and for lenders evaluating collateral, the properties worth the closest look are the ones where the ownership group can point to specific, completed repositioning work, not just a favorable market cycle.
Source: Kate King, “Malls Were Left for Dead. Now They Are the Top Performer in Commercial Real Estate,” The Wall Street Journal, September 14, 2026.
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We welcome the opportunity to discuss what these trends mean for your retail portfolio or a specific asset you are evaluating.
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