Retail Properties

 Table 6 presents a breakdown of retail property sales by markets. New York City

with 3,669 retail sales (11 percent of all sales) is the largest market, followed by Los

Angeles with 3,235 retail transactions (9.7 percent of all sales), and Chicago with 2,796

observations (8.4 percent of all sales). The smallest retail market is Reno, which only has

9 sales recorded. Similarly to the office sales, there is less concentration of transactions in

the largest markets. The top 20 markets account for 77 percent of all sales.

 The use of exchanges in retail transactions also varies substantially across markets.

Similarly to the office transactions, tax deferred exchanges are not as popular as with

apartment sales. In none of the 46 CoStar markets do exchanges outnumber non-

exchanges. The largest percentage of exchanges is observed in Portland, where this type

of transaction represents more than 40 percent of all sales.3 Once again exchanges are

more frequently observed in the Western United States.

 There is substantial variation in the distribution of relinquished and replacement

types of exchanges across the sample. In 10 of the retail markets relinquished exchanges

outnumber the replacement exchanges. In more than 50 percent of the sample the

replacement exchanges are less than twice as frequent as relinquished exchanges. Finally,

the replacement exchanges in 10 markets are more than 3 times higher than the

relinquished exchanges4. Notable markets, in which replacement exchanges significantly

outnumber relinquished exchanges include Tucson, with a ratio of replacement to

relinquished property sales equal to 5.6. Las Vegas has a ratio of 5.3, Riverside 4.9,

Dallas /Forth Worth 4.2, and Houston 3.8. Table 6 illustrates also the rareness of


3 In Reno 44 percent of all sales are exchanges; however this percentage is not reliable since it is based on
only 9 observations.
4 Reno and San Antonio are not included in this analysis, based on their small number of observations.