03/31/2025 | By John Cumbelich

If you would have asked me 20, or even 10 years ago which part of the Commercial Real Estate (CRE) business I was in, I probably would have answered, “the suburban shopping center business.”  While our brokerage practice has always included a High Street ...

02/10/2025 | By John Cumbelich

Much has been written recently about the genuinely heartbreaking decision of John Fisher to move the Oakland A’s to Sacramento, with aspirations to later move them to Las Vegas. As an East Bay native and lifetime fan and supporter of the team, I have personally ...

01/15/2024 | By John Cumbelich

Over decades in the CRE industry, our team has completed hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of multi-market site tours with grocers, fuel brands, restaurants, pharmacies, home improvement and fitness brands, coffee and burger and chicken concepts, and many, many other users of quality real estate. ...

11/15/2023 | By John Cumbelich

The U.S. unemployment rate is now experiencing its 8th consecutive quarter below 4%, with national unemployment clocking in at 3.9% as Q4 of 2023 begins. Historically speaking, a phenomenon like this occurs about twice every century. Practically speaking, this means that the U.S. consumer ...

08/22/2023 | By John Cumbelich

Each era in retail real estate has its own cohort of catalytic anchor tenants and users around which new projects revolve.  I’m old enough to recall the then still-growing regional mall sector of the 1980’s, and the department store anchors who then ruled in ...

11/02/2022 | By John Cumbelich

As the sun begins to set on the withered stalk of another eventful year in commercial real estate, uncertainty prevails in Q4 of 2022 as forecasters ponder the direction that markets will take in 2023. Throughout 2021 and the first half of 2022, the same ...

08/11/2022 | By John Cumbelich

In the early days, I would take a listing on a retail center with one or two 1,200 SF vacancies, hoping to get leases signed at $1.00/SF per month with a Subway or Supercuts franchisee. That would result in a leasing commission of $6,000, ...

07/14/2022 | By John Cumbelich

Recently the Wall Street Journal published an article observing that if the US economy is in a recession, “it’s a very strange one” (July 4, 2022). Every recession over the past 80 years has been characterized by two consistent factors: increased unemployment and a ...