Effect of consumer austerity on high street shops investment

We think that consumer spending will struggle to grow at all for at least the next two to three years. Taking the period 2010-14 as a whole, this will result in average total returns for high street shops of around 6% per annum. These will be lower than the 8% returns we expect for retail warehouses and shopping centres. In turn, that is likely further to reduce the enthusiasm of investors to own and manage high street shops.