REAL ESTATE NEWS

Shoppers are out in force at the malls and U.S. downtowns at the height of the holiday season, according to data from MRI Software. But trying to correlate it to data from the National Retail Federation and online data from Adobe makes the picture muddier.

MRI said that U.S. shopping malls saw a 14.2% month-over-month increase and a 29.5% week-over-week spike during the week of Thanksgiving and Black Friday. That included a 153% jump on Black Friday itself. There were double-digit foot-traffic increases ahead of Black Friday because early promotions and school closures spread visits across multiple days.

But with all the buzz, the firm says year-over-year figures dipped, suggesting "that consumers are still spending selectively.” The malls’ numbers were 1.6% lower compared to the same period in 2024. U.S. downtowns saw a 4.2% decline month-over-month and a marginal drop of 1.1% compared to 2024.

Part of the year-over-year changes may have been because early-access promotions might have pulled demand forward and encouraged shoppers to spend over multiple days.

However, data from the National Retail Federation said that a record 202.9 million consumers shopped from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday, according to its annual consumer survey. That’s up from 197 million last year and topped the previous record of 200.4 million in 2023.

Black Friday, according to the NRF, saw 80.3 million in-store. Comparing that to the MRI figures is difficult because that company expressed everything in comparative percentages, not straight counts. However, NRF did say that in 2024, the figure was 81.7 million, a drop of 1.7%, so roughly in line with MRI’s projections.

NRF figures for the weekend showed 62.7 million in-store, up 2.6% from 61.1 million in 2024. In-store shoppers were 32.6 million, an increase of 27% over 25.6 million in 2024.

Top shopping destinations over the weekend were supermarkets (47%), department stores (40%), clothing stores (37%) and discount stores (30%). About 96% of those shopping over the weekend made a holiday-related purchase. They spend $337.86 on average for gifts, holiday apparel, decorations and other seasonal purchases. It was up from $315.56 and the second-highest figure after $361.90 in 2019. About two-thirds, or $225.74, were spent on gifts.

According to NRF, Cyber Monday saw 75.9 million online shoppers, up 17.9% year-over-year from 64.4 million.

Adobe’s dollar figures for Cyber Monday were $14.25 billion in 2025, a surge of 7.1% from $13.3 billion in 2024.

However, dollar value comparisons do have a degree of uncertainty as increased prices from inflation and changes aren’t back out of the figures. So perhaps several percent of any increases might be due to people paying higher prices and not necessarily buying more.

Source: GlobeSt/ALM