Regency Centers is a publicly traded commercial real estate company. They hold 395 mixed use developments across the United States, of which roughly 85% are grocery-anchored retail sites. So essentially, Regency acquires grocery-anchored centers and re-develops them or they acquire land and develop their own grocery-anchored centers. Ultimately, they are continuously doing similar projects, but the most important part of these projects is the profit, and the most important part of turning a profit is spending the right amount on the front end. There were multiple interesting tools that Regency uses to determine value of existing centers and prospective developments. One of the tools used to evaluate existing centers is called PLACER. PLAER is a data analysis application that uses cell phone data to determine many different things about shopping centers, and even specific stores. The app displays data collected from the phones of customers, with and almost alarming amount of personal information; it tracks where the customer travelled from, how old they are, the amount of money they spend in the center, the amount of time they spend in the center, how many times per month they visit the center, their race, and their annual income, just to name a few. The data is compiled in the app so that it can be easily interpreted to help predict profitability and therefore value. Another important evaluation tool, used for both existing and prospective developments, is Cap Rate, which is a monetary equation: Annual Net Income/Total Cost of Investment. This is one of the primary tools used to evaluate centers.
