Brookfield
Miles of Malls
By Venessa Wong
If you're looking to lease commercial space for your business--whether in an office tower, industrial or business park, mall, or shopping complex--there's a good chance your search will lead to 1 of 25 real estate companies. That's because they own a combined total of more than 3.65 billion square feet of commercial real estate in the U.S. and overseas, an area considerably greater in size than the City of Boston. To identify some of America's biggest landlords, Businessweek.com consulted reports from real estate publications National Real Estate Investor and Retail Traffic, which conduct surveys of commercial real estate owners, and spoke to CoStar Group, a Washington-based commercial real estate information and analytics company. We then contacted the largest property owners on these lists, based on the number of square feet they own and manage globally, to update the data. The lists include companies that own and lease space, such as industrial real estate company Prologis, as well as real estate investment managers that acquire and manage properties for investors, including CB Richard Ellis Investors, and pension funds such as TIAA-CREF. Apartment property owners were not included. Also, while retailers such as Wal-Mart, Target, McDonald's, and Kroger have large real estate portfolios, information on space they own, compared to space they lease, was not available before our publication date.
Click here to see 25 of America's biggest commercial real estate owners.
