Retail investment activity isticking up, slowly. In the first half of the year, investmentactivity increased 3% nationally, over 2017, and the second quarteralone increased 41% year-over-year, according to research fromNewmark Knight Frank. The Western US has lead theincrease in activity, increasing 33% year-over-year and 96% for thesecond quarter alone. Despite the headlines, investment activityhas grown steadily since early 2015.

“With the country coming off of ten straight quarters ofdecline, investor uncertainty due to a combination of interest ratespeculation and volatility, continued retailer consolidation,bankruptcies and general uncertainty coupled with a lack ofrefreshed pricing data points seems to have calmed,” GlennR. Rudy, senior managing director of retail investments atNKF Capital Markets, tells GlobeSt.com. “With the increased volumethe surge in data points is leading to realistic pricing discoveryand abundant capital is ready to continue this positivetrajectory.”

In addition to popularity of West Coast markets, secondarymarkets are also seeing an increase in activity, and are actuallytrending above primary markets in terms of sales volumes.“Secondary markets, which historically have always trailed primarymarkets in terms of overall activity, outpaced primary marketsthrough the first half of 2018 by a significant margin,” says Rudy.“This is primarily due to the sheer lack of available product inprimary markets and its correlated pricing. However, now thatthere are some additional data points supporting today's pricing inthese secondary markets, the yields have simply been too attractivefor capital, starved for allocation, to resist.”