Which U.S. retail markets deserve the highest 2026 allocation priority, and how should the preserved CoStar top-performing-market evidence be separated from CRET's conviction overlay?

This page is the market-ranking companion to National Retail Capital Allocation 2026. The capital-allocation page ranks retail subsectors; this page separates two related but different ranking layers:

1. preserved public CoStar top-performing retail market evidence
2. public substitute ranking infrastructure from Marcus & Millichap's 50-market 2026 National Retail Index and C&W's Q1 2026 shopping-center market tables
3. CRET's conviction overlay from the current canonical wiki, public source notes, and applied or dry-run public market observations

The CRET overlay is not a single broker league table. It gives weight to vacancy / availability, rent growth, absorption or leasing velocity, construction discipline, tenant demand, household or visitor demand, and whether the cited evidence applies to the whole metro or only a corridor. Vacancy and availability are not blended without a source caveat. CBRE's official Q1 2026 U.S. retail figures now preserve a primary-source national availability and rent-growth cross-check: 4.9% availability, $24.59/SF average asking rent, a 120 bps downtown availability increase since 2022, a 91 bps suburban availability decrease since 2022, and Phoenix leading markets in Q1 construction and absorption. Colliers' public Q1 2026 U.S. retail statistics sheet now adds 33 structured source-labeled observations: 4.4% retail vacancy, mall and shopping-center vacancy, -4.3M SF Q1 net absorption, 4.5M SF leasing activity, 53.2M SF under construction, 5.1M SF delivered, top construction metros, and top asking-rent markets across a stated 390-market comparison set. JLL's Q1 2026 U.S. retail report now adds 36 structured source-labeled observations: 4.4% total vacancy, -4.4M SF Q1 absorption, $25.88/SF market rent, 53.0M SF under construction, source-labeled rent-growth leaders, tenant opening / closure categories, and retail capital-market shares. CoStar's April 2026 retail-construction release now adds 12 applied source-labeled observations: 64.2M SF under construction nationally in Q1 2026, an approximate 70.0M SF Q1 2025 comparison, and a reproduced top-10 construction-market order led by Dallas, Houston, and Austin. ICSC's May 2026 broker-roundup article adds a secondary capital-markets cross-check from Newmark, CBRE, Colliers, and C&W: $19.0B of Q1 retail investment sales, 17 $100M-plus single-asset deals, 4.9% CBRE availability, low construction, and mid-6% grocery-anchored cap-rate stabilization. Newmark's own public 1Q26 retail page now adds direct qualitative support for a selectiv

CoStar's December 16, 2025 press release supports Charlotte as the #1 retail market among 43 U.S. markets with at least 100M SF of inventory and gives the methodology: percent of inventory leased, availability rate, market rent growth, change in sales volume, and total return. The CoStar press release, CoStar investor PDF copy, and BusinessWire syndication do not expose the full 43-market table. A public Site Selection Group reproduction attributes the following top-10 order and metric fields to CoStar Analytics, December 2025, and that reproduced top-10 table is now applied as 60 source-labeled structured observations in data/market_import_costar_top_retail_markets_2025_reproduction.json. See Source: CoStar Top-Performing Retail Markets 2025. Values in parentheses are the metric rank inside the 43-market universe.

The original blocker remains unresolved: the full CoStar 43-market performance table has not been preserved. The applied Site Selection Group / CoStar reproduction closes only the public top-10 structured layer. The best broader admissible substitute is Marcus & Millichap's 2026 National Retail Index, which now has applied structured rows for all 50 market ranks and selected national retail context metrics. The NRI ranks markets using forward-looking job growth, vacancy, construction, retail sales, rent, and household-formation indicators. Because that methodology is not the same as CoStar's backward-looking 2025 performance factors, use it as a separate source-preserved ranking layer rather than a replacement CoStar extract.

C&W's Q1 2026 U.S. Retail MarketBeat is the strongest same-source metric table for the CRET overlay and now has an applied structured import for the national shopping-center backbone plus the five low-vacancy markets called out in the report narrative. It reports U.S. shopping-center vacancy of 5.9%, -4.6M SF of Q1 net absorption, $25.48/SF asking rent, 4.199B SF of inventory, 1.98M SF of 2026 YTD deliveries, and 12.26M SF under construction. The applied market rows preserve Miami at 3.0% vacancy, Raleigh / Durham and Salt Lake City at 3.4%, Nashville at 3.5%, and Charleston at 3.9%, with same-source asking-rent rows for each. Its tables cover additional major shopping-center markets for vacancy, asking rent, inventory, deliveries, and under-construction inventory, but it is not itself a ranking.

JLL's Q1 2026 U.S. retail report is useful as a broader retail-market cross-check rather than a shopping-center table. JLL reports 11.8B SF of inventory, 4.4% total vacancy, -4.4M SF of Q1 absorption, 53.0M SF under construction, and national rent growth slowing to 2.0% year over year. It now has an applied structured import for national rows, source-labeled product-type slices, top rent-growth markets, tenant opening / closure categories, and capital-market shares. It also supports the operating interpretation behind the ranking: negative Q1 absorption can coexist with landlord pricing power when new supply is thin, quality vacancy backfills quickly, and expanding tenant categories are restaurants, discount / variety, grocery, fitness, and off-price rather than apparel or electronics. Do not blend the JLL and C&W inventory, vacancy, or construction denominators without source-family labels.

Newmark's 1Q26 U.S. Retail Market Conditions & Trends page is now claim-bearing enough for qualitative source support but not structured import. It says the Q1 2026 retail cycle was selective: retail demand cooled, availability remained historically tight, consumer spending stayed positive while sentiment weakened, prime space gained importance, older assets carried more long-available space, rents held near highs, investor appetite accelerated, and regional performance diverged. Keep that as Newmark source-family framing only until the extended report tables are preserved.

Avison Young's Q1 2026 South Florida retail report adds a direct public broker source for the Miami / South Florida specialist lane: 3.7% vacancy, $42.06/SF average asking rent, and 1.8M SF under construction across the Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach retail markets. It improves South Florida's source depth, but the same source says fundamentals have softened because negative absorption and tenant churn caused a near-term vacancy spike. Use it as scarcity and high-rent support, not as evidence that South Florida deserves broad full-confidence promotion without county / corridor and operating-cost proof.

Avison Young's Q1 2026 Las Vegas retail report adds a public broker source for a market that previously sat mostly in national-table or consumer-context rows: 5.4% vacancy, $36.90/SF asking rent, 1.4M SF under construction, and a stated bifurcation where resort-access rents can approach triple the market average. This supports a corridor-specific watchlist lane for Las Vegas retail, especially first-generation space following multifamily growth, but it does not by itself upgrade Las Vegas into the national top tier because tenant sales, center-level evidence, absorption, and delivered project performance remain missing.

CBRE's Q1 2026 Manhattan retail page improves the New York City row but does not make NYC a generic top-tier retail market. The applied rows preserve Manhattan prime-corridor evidence: $682/SF average asking rent, 3% year-over-year asking-rent growth, 80.6% taking-rent index, 172 direct ground-floor availabilities, and rolling four-quarter leasing velocity above 3.8M SF. Use this to support prime high-street and luxury / destination retail selection, while keeping secondary-street retail and weaker corridors as proof-required.

CBRE's Q1 2026 Los Angeles retail page adds only a compact stability row: 6.2% availability and no quarter-over-quarter availability movement. That helps confirm LA as a large but source-family-caveated corridor-selection market; it does not overcome the existing negative-absorption and corridor-specific evidence requirements.

Newmark's 3Q25 U.S. Retail Market Conditions & Trends report is useful as the Newmark primary historical table layer behind the ICSC 1Q26 roundup. It reports 5.3% national retail availability, 1.1M SF of Q3 absorption, 31.1M SF of Q3 leasing volume, $16.01/SF NNN asking rent, $16.1B of Q3 sales volume, $45.8B of 2025 YTD sales volume, 6.84% all-retail transaction cap rates, and a market availability table where Raleigh, Charlotte, Minneapolis, Tulsa, Seattle, and Nashville appear in the low-availability set. Keep it source-labeled and period-labeled; do not blend its 3Q25 rows into Q1 2026 broker rows.

CoStar's April 2026 retail-construction release is a construction-pipeline ranking input, not a market-performance ranking input. It reinforces that DFW / Houston / Austin / Phoenix / Las Vegas / Charlotte / Atlanta / Orlando / Chicago / San Antonio need pipeline and prelease discipline, but it should not displace the separate CoStar 2025 top-performing-market evidence or the Marcus & Millichap NRI. The useful underwriting distinction is preleased Sun Belt growth-market supply versus lower-volume, more unleased pipelines in many non-South markets.

The preserved public evidence does not expose CoStar's full 43-market table, and the mirror checks found only press-release copies rather than the missing table. Until a primary full table or admissible table extract is preserved, use the reproduced top-10 only with local-support grading.

Charlotte is the only current full-confidence retail ranking leader because the repo preserves both a direct national rank signal and supporting local metrics. Nashville is now the strongest practical second candidate because it has CoStar top-10 evidence, Marcus & Millichap top-10 forward-looking support, applied Q1 2026 Avison Young / Matthews / Partners observations, a structured Avison Young / CoStar submarket appendix, applied 2025 NDP annual Downtown demand / sales-tax / retail-opening rows, HR&A / Gensler 2024 Downtown market-study rows, Cool Springs tenant-addition and Primark / Chipotle backfill evidence, Nashville West occupancy / visitor support, and Mt. Juliet grocery-anchored demographic support. The submarket table blocker is closed: Cool Springs / Franklin, Downtown, and Mt Juliet / Lebanon all show positive LTM absorption with low vacancy, while North Nashville is the major vacancy / absorption drag. Nashville still lacks corridor-specific tenant-sales proof and broad executed-backfill evidence across every target corridor, so it remains below Charlotte's full-confidence status. Greenville-Spartanburg has strong structured support, but it is not supported by the reproduced CoStar top-10 table. Raleigh-Durham belongs in the CRET leader set only with the vacancy-methodology caveat attached.

Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Atlanta, Miami / South Florida, Phoenix, Denver, Tampa, Orlando, Columbus, and Norfolk / Hampton Roads are investable, but the gates are visible. DFW and Phoenix need supply / prelease discipline. Houston and Miami need corridor separation. Atlanta needs absorption reconciliation. Tampa, Orlando, and Hampton Roads need negative-absorption and corridor discipline. Columbus needs trade-area proof around Easton / Polaris / Short North and preservation of its Q1 absorption caveat. Denver is stable but not a top growth market.

Austin, Boston, and New York City can produce excellent retail investments, but the evidence is corridor-specific. Their strongest lanes are Domain / North Burnet, Newbury Street / Assembly Row, Times Square / Williamsburg / West Village / Flatiron, and similarly scarce or destination-oriented nodes. These should not be exported as broad metro retail rankings without the corridor label.

• National Retail Capital Allocation 2026 - subsector allocation framework that this ranking complements.
• Retail Investment Thesis 2026 - national retail thesis and operating rules.
• Retail Hub - asset-class router and source discipline.
• Source: Colliers U.S. Retail Market Statistics Q1 2026 - national retail context with applied observations across vacancy, absorption, construction, deliveries, subtype rows, and selected top construction / rent metros.
• Source: Marcus & Millichap 2026 U.S. Retail Investment Forecast - public 50-market forward-looking National Retail Index with applied structured ordinal rank observations.
• Source: CBRE Q1 2026 U.S. Retail Figures - official primary-source national retail availability, rent, downtown / suburban split, and Phoenix construction / absorption source.
• Source: Cushman & Wakefield U.S. Retail MarketBeat Q1 2026 - public shopping-center metric tables for vacancy, rent, inventory, deliveries, and under construction.
• Source: JLL U.S. Retail Market Dynamics Q1 2026 - public national retail cross-check for vacancy, negative Q1 absorption, thin supply, fast backfill, tenant-mix rotation, rent-growth leaders, and institutional capital demand.
• Source: ICSC Retail Heads Into ICSC Las Vegas in a Powerful Position - secondary public roundup of Newmark, CBRE, Colliers, C&W, and Lee & Associates Q1 2026 retail signals; useful for capital-markets and source-family triangulation, not structured import.
• Source: Newmark 3Q25 U.S. Retail Market Conditions & Trends - public Newmark national retail report with applied observations for 3Q25 availability, absorption, leasing volume, asking rent, capital markets, and market availability tables.
• Source: CoStar U.S. Retail Construction Pullback Q1 2026 - public CoStar national retail-construction pullback release with applied national pipeline and reproduced top-10 construction-market rank observations.
• Source: Avison Young South Florida Retail Market Report Q1 2026 - public Q1 2026 South Florida retail report with applied observations for combined Miami / Fort Lauderdale / West Palm Beach vacancy, asking rent, under-construction inventory, construction-pipeline contraction, and five-year rent-growth benchmark context.
• Source: Avison Young Las Vegas Retail Market Report Q1 2026 - public Q1 2026 Las Vegas retail report with applied observations for vacancy, asking rent, under-construction inventory, construction-pipeline peak, under-construction share of inventory, vacancy range, and resort-access rent-premium context.
• Source: Nashville Retail Q1 2026 Public Reports - public Avison Young / Matthews / Partners Q1 2026 Nashville retail stack plus Nashville Downtown Partnership and HR&A / Gensler Downtown rows, with applied vacancy, rent, absorption, construction, delivery, sales, cap-rate, leasing, annual Downtown demand, market-study, forecast, and sale observations.
• Charlotte Retail and Consumer Market and Charlotte Market Intelligence 2025 - current strongest market-ranking support.
• Greenville-Spartanburg Retail and Consumer Market and Greenville-Spartanburg Market Intelligence 2025.
• Nashville CRE Capital Allocation 2026, Nashville Market Intelligence 2025, and Source: Nashville Retail Q1 2026 Public Reports.
• Raleigh-Cary Retail and Consumer Market and Raleigh-Durham Market Intelligence 2025.
• DFW Retail Market, Texas Retail Markets 2026, and DFW Retail Market Intelligence Q4 2025.
• Houston Retail Market and Houston Market Intelligence 2025.
• Atlanta Retail and Consumer Market and Miami and Atlanta Retail Market Intelligence Q4 2025.
• Miami Retail and Consumer Market.
• Phoenix Retail and Consumer Market and Phoenix Market Intelligence 2025.
• Denver Retail and Consumer Market and Denver Market Intelligence 2025.
• Boston Retail Market and Boston Geography Verification 2026-04-30 Batch 1.
• NYC Retail Corridors and Source: NYC Multifamily and Retail 2025.