Retail buyers split between net lease and shopping centers, Marcus & Millichap reports

Marcus & Millichap's third-quarter national retail report, covered by Connect CRE, describes a buyer pool that split along uncertainty rather than shrank because of it, and the two camps are less different than they look. One group leaned into single-tenant, net-leased properties on what the report calls their perceived lower risk, while a second went the other direction toward shopping centers where re-tenanting, capital upgrades and tighter management could lift returns.

The safety bid did not thin out the top of the market: retail sales of $20 million and above in the first half of 2026 produced the second-highest January-through-June tally on record, meaning the largest trades kept clearing even as the stated motive for buying shifted toward durability.

What buyers appear willing to pay for is condition. The report puts the average price of retail assets renovated within the past five years at more than $700 per square foot over the trailing 12 months; read against a development market where construction and financing costs have made new supply hard to justify, that number looks less like a styling premium and more like a shortcut to a stabilized rent roll, an inference the report does not draw.

Its forward view turns on inflation: should price pressure persist, the report suggests investors could favor properties with high-credit tenants and built-in rent increases, along with recently renovated assets carrying long-term leases. It also notes that an increase in institutional capital and retail pricing could generate additional sell-side activity in the second half of 2026, phrasing that makes more listings conditional on price rather than on a broadened buyer pool.

The net-lease buyer is underwriting a tenant; the shopping center buyer is underwriting a lease-up that a previous owner left on the table, and both are betting on the reliability of income rather than on traffic growth at a static roster. Paired in a single quarter, the buyer who wants no work and the buyer who wants renovation work are, in this market, the same investor with different risk budgets.

The test arrives with the sellers: if institutional capital keeps arriving and pricing holds, the second half of 2026 could bring more product to market, and which of the two camps absorbs it will be the tell. Net-lease assets with credit tenants and escalators should clear first; the shopping centers will tell you whether the appetite for management-intensive upside survives a higher cost of capital.