Jan Kniffen: 30% of America’s Malls Will Fail

All of a sudden, America has an oversupply of shopping malls? Or, is Amazon merely stealing customers, or both? It’s probably both.

Thanks to the changing landscape, Jan Kniffen, consultant to retail, believes 30% of America’s malls will fail in the coming years. Moreover, he believes Macy’s will shutter 300 out of its 800 slop-houses.

“On an apples-to-apples basis, we have twice as much per-capita retail space as any other place in the world. The U.K. is second. They’re half of what we are. So, yes, we are the most over-stored place in the world,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

With the U.S. having an estimated 48 square feet of retail space per citizen, the footprint is poised to decline “pretty fast,” Kniffen said.

In his view, about 400 of America’s 1,100 enclosed malls will fail in the coming years. Of the survivors, about 250 will thrive and the rest will struggle. Likewise, Macy’s probably needs 500 of its roughly 800 existing stores, he said.

Out of the box thinking here, what will happen to Apple? They’re probably one of the few successful mall based stores out there. If 30% of the malls close, what the fuck happens to them? Or, how about SBUX, the REIT operators and Orange Julius?!

The failure of the mall will have ramifications. Just the blight alone, of having to see an empty edifice that once housed greatness, is demoralizing and horrific for local real estate values.

The whole country is becoming Detroit, thanks to the digital geeks at Amazon. We’re going to be reduced to a post apocalyptic world, with empty malls, and a ruinous landscape, as humans migrate over into the virtual world, like in the movie The Matrix, only real!