RCA in the commercial property press:

Commercial real estate: The day the mall died

The Examiner reports: April 16, 2009: The Day the Mall Died

One of them is the Mall — that icon of consumption itself. In fact, on April 16, 2009, "The Mall" as we know it actually died.
That was the day Chicago-based General Growth Properties (GGP) — the second-largest mall owner in the United States — filed for bankruptcy in federal court.

After all, GGP's bankruptcy filing was simply the tip of the iceberg. With more than $530 billion in commercial mortgages coming due in the months ahead, we could be facing another real estate collapse as dangerous as the one in housing.

That makes GGP the equivalent of a dead canary in a coal mine, as this cycle of distress will undoubtedly take others down. General Growth Properties will certainly not suffer alone.

"This is kind of the beginning of the end," Dan Fasulo of Real Capital Analytics said recently. "This bankruptcy will drive down the values of mall assets in the United States. It's going to put, I believe, more supply on the market than can be absorbed by investors."