Consumer confidence is weak, real wages growth is flat or negative, and the usual retail suspects continue to claim online shopping is eating their lunch and that penalty rates are breaking them.
But central business district retail rents are soaring in NSW and are increasing nationally. What gives?
As is often the case, there's a big difference between what consumers say and what they do. Retail sales held up last year despite all the negative sentiment.
Shopping is forever in a state of flux, with some brands failing as others rise and those hurting most can be relied on to whinge on the way down.
Muscling in
And then there's the reported impact of foreigners wanting to muscle in on a retail market that remains relatively strong on a global scale.
It's the foreigners who pushed up Sydney CBD rents by 10.7 per cent and Melbourne by 7.8 per cent, a CBRE quarterly report on the retail sectors shows.
The Property Council quotes CBRE retail services national director Alistair Palmer as saying the trend towards domestic retailers being priced out of prime locations looks set to continue this year.
"We expect domestic retailers to either be willing to pay higher rents or relocate to secondary locations," Palmer says. "Domestic retailers are also repositioning and reinventing themselves to target niches between the mass and high-end luxury markets, such as the fast-growing 'affordable luxury' segment."
But it is alleged those pushy foreigners also are targeting regional shopping centres, with CBRE expecting rents in regional centres to increase by 2.6 per cent this year and by 2.8 per cent in 2016.
The CBD rent surge comes after falls in 2011 and 2012. The national rise of 3.7 per cent last year was held back by Perth, where rents are falling.
CBRE says foreign retailers have a competitive advantage of vertically integrated supply chains and economies of scale that enable them to meet higher occupancy costs.
That could be put less kindly: some local retailers aren't up to it, lagging international best practice, trying to get by on the protection that the old "tyranny of distance" provided and failing to invest in their businesses in the face of changing consumer tastes and demands.
And there is another possibility: some of those foreigners with Australian ambitions are riding for a fall.
For every Zara, there's a potential Daimaru – the Japanese department store that opened with a flourish in Melbourne and subsequently closed.
Global game
The strains of increasingly competitive retailing are global. Should retail spending falter, odds are some of the newcomers will too under the weight of expensive establishment costs, never mind those rising rents. And while a weaker Australian dollar makes those rents look less expensive back at head office, it also means Australian dollar sales and profits don't look as flash.
The full CBRE report says the foreign retailer store rollouts on Australia's high streets continues to gain momentum.
"With many of these retailers reaching market saturation in home markets, they have looked abroad for growth opportunities.
"Australia's high consumption per capita relative to other advanced economies, with expectation of further growth, is garnering strong interest from foreign retailers."
The report also promises rising rents for large-format household goods retailers.
While the overall retail story has been mixed, CBRE notes that household goods retailing increased by 10.9 per cent to November as the high level of housing construction feeds through to furniture and white goods.
