Retail Announcements:

Its amazing how fast 2010 has gone as we welcome a new financial year, Australia's first female Prime Minister and the proposed new changes to retail trading hours. Job security and staff retention are also major talking points as companies begin to look internally at different ways to keep good staff happy now the job market begins to tighten up once more.Its amazing how fast 2010 has gone as we welcome a new financial year, Australia's first female Prime Minister and the proposed new changes to retail trading hours. Job security and staff retention are also major talking points as companies begin to look internally at different ways to keep good staff happy now the job market begins to tighten up once more.

Recently, we have seen Australia's retail sales sluggish and consumer sentiment is wavering, however retail consultancy Urbis says retailers as well as landlords, should keep their cool as conditions are likely to improve. In its latest "Retail Perspectives" report, Urbis said much has been made in recent months of the impact on recent sales of rising interest rates and consumer jitters about the state of the economy.

Figures released from the Australian Bureau of Statistics this month showed that retail trade was up 0.2 percent over May. The yearly growth rate is now the lowest it has been in almost nine years, coming off inflated highs thanks to the government's fiscal stimulus.

Urbis National Director of Economics, Simon Rumbold, said looking back at 2007 and 2008, the retail market was "going ballistic, it was just unsustainably high. When the global financial crisis hit, retail just disappeared for about nine months. (Financial Review 9th July 2010)

As we are all looking for positive news, Australian retail asset sales actually clocked just under $2.05 billion for the first half of 2010. Investors are continuing to scout the market for potential investments, according to Jones Lang LaSalle.

The half-year result is close to the total annual sales recorded for the full 2009 year, which was just shy of $2.5 billion. Interestingly, retail asset sales in WA, NSW and the ACT have each surpassed the 2009 full-year totals in their respective markets. JLL Head of Retail investments Simon Rooney said the recovery in retail asset sales volumes reflected much stronger sentiment at the larger end of the investment market.

The WA market contributed to almost 40 per cent of all retail asset sales in the first six months of the year, recording $814.5 million of retail assets sold over the half-year. (Financial Review 8th July 2010)

Something different:

In June, The top performers of the S&P/ASX 200 Australian REIT index were Charter Hall Retail REIT (up 7 per cent), GPT (up 6.4 per cent) and Abacus Property Group, which rose by 5.1 per cent after holding an investor day earlier in the month. Japan was the only market to post a negative turn, down 6.9 per cent. Domestically, Citi's top listed property picks are Charter Hall Retail REIT, ING Office Fund and Stockland.

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