May 2026 data release notes – Empowering Your Retail Strategy
🛍️ Unlocking Unparalleled Market Visibility Across 17,557 Shopping Centers & 367,938 Tenant Locations
Secure a distinct competitive advantage in the North American retail landscape with the industry’s most comprehensive and dynamic retail property intelligence dataset. The May 2026 Directory of Major Malls / ShoppingCenters.com update delivers a powerful and unmatched value proposition: extraordinary depth of market visibility, spanning from high-level portfolio ownership and management intelligence all the way down to highly granular, tenant-level metrics that reveal the true pulse of the retail ecosystem.
What sets the DMM dataset apart is its sheer, unrivaled scale combined with surgical-level precision
Comprehensive coverage of 17,557 shopping centers encompassing approximately 4.37 billion square feet of Gross Leasable Area (GLA) across the U.S. and Canada, no other resource comes close to matching its breadth.
Drill deeper, and the competitive edge sharpens further — with 367,938 tenant locations tracked across every major retail category, representing an estimated 109,000 distinct retail brands, this dataset transforms the complexity of the North American retail market into clear, actionable intelligence.
Whether you are a retailer executing precision site selection, an investor benchmarking portfolio performance, or a developer identifying untapped market opportunities, the May 2026 DMM dataset arms you with the decisive insights needed to act with absolute confidence.
From understanding which ownership giants — like Kimco Realty Corporation (520 centers) and Simon Property Group (141,707,000 sqft of GLA) — command the largest market footprints, to tracking the dominance of Food & Restaurants (84,800 locations, 23.1%) and Services (53,815 locations, 14.6%) in the tenant mix, the depth and clarity of this data is simply unmatched.
This dataset of retail shopping centers is the strategic backbone of retail intelligence — empowering smarter decisions, sharper investments, and stronger competitive positioning in an ever-evolving retail landscape.
This release delivers significantly expanded and refined data regarding center types, geographic distribution, and ownership, alongside detailed tenant listings — including anchor store vacancy metrics that reveal critical performance trends.
Key Metrics for May 2026
- 4.37 Billion sqft of Retail GLA
- 17,557 Shopping Centers classified into 7 categories
- 16,695 U.S. Sh Ctrs
- 862 Canadian Sh Ctrs
- Open Air vs Enclosed (in design):
- 15,825 open-air (totaling 3.2 Billion sqft)
- 1,732 enclosed (totaling 1.2 Billion sqft)
***Coming Soon in 2026…Retail Nodes ***
Tenant and Retail Brand data
DMM Tenant data now covers over 367,00 individual tenants across all listed shopping centers, with detailed store-level information including brand name, and category, Chain Store Type and NAICs code.
Leading Retail categories: #1 at 23% is Food & Restaurants
- Food & Restaurants (84,800 locations, 23.1%)
- Services (53,815 locations, 14.6%)
- Specialty Stores (42,296 locations, 11.57%)
Portfolio Coverage
The May dataset provides extensive coverage of shopping center landlords, REITs, and management companies across the U.S. and Canada, detailing both property counts and gross leasable area (GLA) managed.
Major players such as Kimco Realty Corporation, SmartCentres, Federal Realty Investment Trust. GGP and Simon Property Group collectively oversee hundreds of centers, with leaders like Kimco holding 520 properties and Simon commanding over 141 million square feet of GLA (based on the DMM dataset of centers).
This ownership intelligence highlights portfolio scale, regional influence, and market positioning, offering valuable benchmarks for investors, developers, and retail strategists assessing competitive dynamics in the retail real estate sector.
Key Benefits:
Using the Directory of Major Malls (DMM) shopping center and tenant data can provide a variety of benefits for different stakeholders, including retailers, real estate developers, investors, and market researchers.
Access pre-analyzed trade area demographics, segmentation metrics without the hassle or expense of licensing 3rd party data and supporting additional technology.
Advantages of DMM data:
- Market Intelligence: Deep insights into consumer behavior, retail performance, tenant mix, and geographic distribution for informed site selection .
- Strategic Analysis: Identifies prime locations, high-traffic areas, and competitive landscapes for retailers and developers .
- Investment Support: Enables evaluation of shopping center viability, tenant composition, and performance metrics for better fund allocation decisions .
- Research & Benchmarking: Valuable for market studies, academic research, and performance comparison against competitors .
- Marketing Optimization: Provides demographic insights and competitor analysis for tailored marketing strategies and personalized promotions .
- Future Planning: Highlights development opportunities and helps assess expansion risks based on retail trends .
DMM’s robust dataset gives stakeholders a competitive edge through reliable insights that drive growth, optimize performance, and unlock opportunities in the dynamic retail landscape .
License the DMM Data
DMM/ShoppingCenters.com data and analysis is available via access online access, custom direct data licensing, geospatial platform resellers and Esri ArcGIS platform
Visit the Custom Data page on ShoppingCenters.com to review the updated data schema to leverage new attributes fully. Reach out to the data team at Directory of Major Malls with questions and to request a demo and sample data
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