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Federal has expanded from the coasts to the center of the country. Kimco and CTO are pursuing portfolio grow via structured investments. Acadia street-level-retail leases reset rents to market rate after five years. Kite is focusing on small-shop space. Brixmor has sped up its leasing process.

Federal Realty Expands Beyond the Coasts With $950M in Acquisitions

Federal, which historically has operated on the East and West coasts, has built an eight-property “Central Region” portfolio to help drive growth. During an earnings call, president and CEO Don Wood said the previous purchase of four Chicago-area retail centers launched the portfolio. Since then, the portfolio has grown to nearly 2.7 million square feet via another four recent acquisitions totaling $950.3 million: Town Center Plaza and Town Center Crossing, both in Leawood, Kansas; Village Pointe in Omaha, Nebraska; and The Summit in Birmingham, Alabama.

Tenants that perform well at Federal properties in Silicon Valley, the Boston area and the Washington, D.C., area — such as Alo, Cooper’s Hawk Winery & Restaurants, FP Movement and Vuori — now are leasing at Central Region properties, Wood said. And tenants in the Central Region portfolio are now looking at Federal’s coastal properties, too, he said.

Early results for the new portfolio are promising, according to Wood. Foot traffic at the Leawood and Omaha centers rose 8% from the first three quarters of 2025 to the first three quarters of 2026, he said, while projected five-year compound annual growth rates at the two properties are higher than when the deals went through underwriting. Federal is forecasting a compound annual growth rate of 5% at The Summit, which is in the neighborhood of the projected rates for the Omaha and Leawood properties.

Kimco and CTO Pursue Portfolio Growth Through Structured Investments

Acting more like lenders than landlords, Kimco and CTO are turning to structured investing for some of their deals. Through its Structured Investment Program, Kimco provides mezzanine loans and preferred equity to owners of shopping centers. The program generates interest income and often gives Kimco first dibs on buying the properties later.

In its third-quarter earnings report, Kimco said it had completed the program’s third acquisition: Pompano Marketplace, a 239,000-square-foot, Walmart-anchored center in Pompano Beach, Florida. Kimco paid $53 million for the center, and the $35 million mezzanine loan it had made to the property’s owner was repaid in full at closing.

Realty Income Sells $527M to Private Investors in Q3

Deal-hungry private investors are snapping up many of the properties that triple-net lease REIT Realty Income is selling. During an earnings call, president and CEO Sumit Roy said demand for 1031 exchanges, accelerated property depreciation and year-end timing are driving acquisitions by private investors. In the third quarter alone, Realty Income sold $527 million in assets.

During the first three quarters of 2026, Realty Income received proceeds of $875 million from property sales, more than in all of fiscal year 2025, said Roy, who expects fourth-quarter sales activity to remain elevated. He said the REIT isn’t selling solely to reduce portfolio risk. “We are also selling well-performing assets when the private market value and reinvestment returns create a better outcome,” he said. “Our objective is to generate non-dilutive capital that can be redeployed toward investments offering superior risk-adjusted returns.”

NNN REIT Finds Big Value in Small Acquisitions

Acadia Resets Street-Level-Retail Rents to Fair Market Value After 5 Years

A leasing structure that resets rents to market rates every five years is paying off for Acadia’s street-retail portfolio. Its street-retail leases reset to fair market value every five years, with a minimum 3% increase, executive vice president of leasing and development A.J. Levine said during an earnings call. That allows Acadia to capture market-rent growth much sooner, president and CEO Ken Bernstein said.

Many shopping center tenants sign leases with fixed renewal options, giving them the right to extend the leases at rents set when they were first signed, usually with modest increases. For years, landlords and lenders favored long leases with little built-in rent growth, Bernstein said, and gave tenants too many fixed renewal options that kept rents from catching up to the market.

Kite Drives Leasing Growth Via Small Shops

Kite, whose portfolio counts 164 open-air centers and mixed-use properties, continues to enjoy strong demand and leasing momentum from small shops, CEO John Kite said on an earnings call. “That’s where we see the most upside from here,” he said. The REIT defines small shops as those occupying less than 10,000 square feet.

Small shops represent about 40% of Kite’s revenue, the CEO said, and are located in “fabulous” anchored shopping centers. The percentage of the REIT’s small-shop space that is leased rose 90 basis points year over year in the third quarter to 92.7%, and small shops’ share of annualized base rent jumped 700 basis points from the fourth quarter of 2022 to the third quarter of 2026. He said small shops command average rents of nearly $38 per square foot, more than twice the average for anchors, while demanding less capital spending.

Brixmor Speeds Up Leasing Process

Leasing velocity is turning into a competitive advantage for Brixmor. In the third quarter, it completed each of its eight biggest anchor leases in less than 60 days. That includes an off-price retailer whose lease wrapped in less than 30 days, president and CEO Brian Finnegan said during an earnings call. “Our national retailer relationships, together with the investments we’ve made in technology and AI, are helping us streamline the leasing process, reduce downtime and accelerate rent commencement,” Finnegan said. “Ultimately, that allows us to more effectively capitalize on the strong retailer demand we’re seeing across the portfolio.”

Nuveen, Kimco and 11North Pick Up 22 Centers in Separate Deals Totaling $849.2M

Investment manager Nuveen Real Estate bought a nearly 1.9 million-square-foot portfolio of 13 shopping centers, 10 of them grocery-anchored, for $445.5 million: six properties in California, four in Colorado and three in Washington. JLL Capital Markets, which represented Nuveen, said the deal represents one of the largest acquisitions of a grocery anchored retail portfolio in the West in recent years. The portfolio is 93.5% leased. Tenants include Safeway, Walmart Neighborhood Market, Sprouts Farmers Market, Grocery Outlet, FoodMaxx, Target, TJ Maxx, Marshalls, Ross Dress for Less and Best Buy.

Kimco Realty paid $295 million for two grocery-anchored centers in the Louisville, Kentucky, area. Paddock Shops, a 351,000-square-foot lifestyle center in Louisville, is anchored by The Fresh Market and is 94% leased. Shelbyville Road Plaza, a 390,000-square-foot center in St. Matthews, is anchored by Trader Joe’s and is 92% leased. Yardi-owned Commercial Property Executive reported the seller of Paddock Shops to be CBRE Investment Management and the seller of Shelbyville Road Plaza to be Hagan Properties.

Kimco CEO Conor Flynn wrote on LinkedIn that the REIT financed the acquisition primarily with proceeds from a 1031 exchange completed this year. It sold those assets at a roughly 5% cap rate and reinvested the proceeds “at a low 6%,” he said. “The bigger opportunity is what comes next. A number of leases are below market, there’s real room to remerchandise and we’ve underwritten [net operating income] growth of about 4% a year over the next decade.”

Retail-focused real estate investment firm 11North Partners acquired a seven-property, 422,949-square-foot portfolio of grocery-anchored shopping centers in Arizona’s Phoenix and Tucson markets for $108.7 million. The acquisition from A&C Properties marks 11North’s first investment in Arizona and expands its retail portfolio into an eighth state. The centers are 96% occupied and anchored by Fry’s Food & Drug. According to JLL, which arranged the sale and $66.4 million in acquisition financing, the properties have below-market rents that offer opportunities to increase revenue through lease renewals and tenant changes.

Site Centers’ Work Is Almost Done: 2 Properties Remain

Only two holdings remain in the portfolio of retail REIT Site Centers as it winds down operations. A spreadsheet shared as part of the REIT’s third-quarter earnings report shows the only retail property left is the Blocks ground-floor retail condo collection in Portland, Oregon. Site Centers has agreed to sell the portfolio for $18.2 million to an unidentified buyer by the end of the fourth quarter. The other holding is the REIT’s headquarters in Beachwood, Ohio, which it’s marketing for sale.

As of Nov. 2, the REIT this year has sold seven properties, a land parcel and stakes in two joint ventures for a total of $233.8 million. In October, Site Centers notified the New York Stock Exchange it would delist its common stock voluntarily effective Dec. 4. After that, the company expects its common stock to trade on the over-the-counter market.

Curbline Properties, a Site Centers spinoff that launched in 2024, now owns former Site Centers properties that lack grocery or big-box anchors. Curbline said in its third-quarter earnings report that year to date, it had acquired 72 convenience shopping centers for a total of $800 million.

Additional reporting by C+CT managing editor Katie Kervin.