Winning Big in Retail

Jeff Rosenberg brings a multi-generation perspective to open-air, retail shopping centers, a sector most investors once wrote off.

 

His family built and operated supermarkets and the centers around them starting in the 1940s. Big V Property Group grew out of that platform and today controls a $2.5 billion, 9 million square foot national portfolio of open-air shopping centers anchored by the likes of Target, TJX brands, Ross, HomeGoods, Sierra Trading, and others.

 

That background matters: Big V understands how retailers actually make money, how store-level performance drives traffic, and why certain locations survive every cycle.

 

A few insights stood out in our conversation:

• Physical retail never died (online shopping, Covid etc) it evolved. Retailers now use stores as omnichannel infrastructure: showroom, warehouse, and last-mile all at once.

• Power-center retail is effectively an ecosystem. A Target anchor drives demographic analysis, infrastructure improvements, credit co-tenancy, and consistent foot traffic for the rest of the center.

• Supply discipline is doing the heavy lifting. Two decades of minimal development plus 96–97% occupancy make today’s retail fundamentally different from overbuilt asset classes.

• Lenders are leaning back in. Big V recently rolled eight core assets, about $1.1 billion, into a single fund and closed a $765 million on-balance-sheet bank loan, the largest retail financing in the country in 2025.

• Underwriting today requires humility. Big V assumes no cap-rate compression. All value has to come from NOI growth and execution, not financial engineering.

 

Here are five questions we covered:

1. Why did retail survive when everyone predicted structural decline?
2. How does a Target anchor change a center’s economics?
3. What does today’s capital stack look like for high-quality retail?
4. How do you underwrite exits when cap-rate compression is off the table?
5. Where are the real risks in a sector that looks “safe” on the surface?

If you want a grounded view of where the next leg of the retail cycle is heading and how an operator with a decades-long track record has never lost investor capital, this conversation is worth your time.

 

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In this series, I cut through the noise to examine how shifting macroeconomic forces and rising geopolitical risk are reshaping real estate investing.

 

With insights from economists, academics, and seasoned professionals, this show helps investors respond to market uncertainty with clarity, discipline, and a focus on downside protection. 

 

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