Baby Boomers Are Driving the NNN Market

Eric Carlton

The market for single-tenant retail is seeing increasing investor demand. So much, in fact, that investors are being forced out of California to look for opportunities and yield. The driver of all of this demand? Baby boomers. The generation is retiring and cashing out of high-management properties, like office and apartment buildings, and into less management-intensive properties. Single-tenant, triple-net retail is the demographics’ favored asset class.

“The baby boom generation is big, and they are all retiring. The 60 year olds to 80 year olds are retiring, and they are cashing out of an office building or apartment building into what I call coupon clippers,” Eric Carlton, SVP at Colliers International, tells GlobeSt.com. “It is mailbox money. Our grandparents used to buy bonds, and they would get paid every month. That is what is happening here. There is a socio-economic pattern that is happening with money that is being placed into single-tenant retail because of the age of our population. It is a retirement plan.”