@DealGroundCRE has incredible data on the Wendy's franchisee's recent bankruptcy filing.  On Sept. 17, Meritage Hospitality Group, which operates 314 Wendy's across 15 states, filed for Chapter 11 in Michigan. Before bankruptcy it had already closed 60 underperforming stores, with more expected. DealGround data shows the net-lease market was pricing this in long before the filing: The markdowns started a year ago, with nearly 30 Wendy's operated by Meritage coming to market. Meritage was selling its own real estate. About a quarter were owned by Meritage-affiliated entities, structured as brand-new 20-year sale-leasebacks, with starting rent set at approx. 7.5% of store level sales. The company was raising cash off its own real estate while securing long-term control of its restaurants. The market marked it down in real time. About a third have had price reductions, typically around 10% and as much as 22%, pushing asking cap rates from the 5s into the 6s. A price reduction on the Lithia Springs, GA location on Sept. 11, was only six days before the bankruptcy filing. Paw Paw, MI is the poster child. Listed last October at $2.2 million and a 5.75% cap, it was cut three times to $1.8 million and a 6.5% cap by July, and the proposed rent lowered along the way from $129,000 to $120,000. It was still unsold when Meritage filed. Six Meritage-guaranteed stores changed hands before the filing. Some closed days before the petition. A New Jersey buyer paid $1.54 million for a Winston-Salem, NC store on Sept. 8, nine days before the filing, on a new 20-year lease. A California family trust closed on a Memphis store five weeks earlier. Are Higher CAP rates worth the risk? The discounts were real. A Winston-Salem location traded at an estimated 7.3% cap against a 5.75% list price. A Hilliard, FL deal was listed last November at a 5.0% cap, sold in June at a 6.6% cap, about 25% below its first ask. Who owns Meritage's stores The recent buyers are family offices, not institutions. All six were private LLCs or family trusts, mostly from out of state. Institutions are a small slice. A national net-lease investor owns a handful of Meritage's Oklahoma stores, bought in 2012 and 2014, and an older net-lease fund owns a few around Toledo. The rest of the landlord list is mostly family trusts and single-property LLCs from Connecticut to Arkansas. Meritage still owns multiple locations.  Will they sell these next? Affiliated entities still own stores around Toledo, West Michigan and West Texas. Sign up for DealGround to get this data before your competitors do. app.dealground.com/

Rahm Emanuel once said, “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.”  CRE brokers constantly monitor the landscape for catastrophic events because they yield opportunities. @Wendys recently announced that it’s closing 5-6% of its footprint, approximately 350 stores. The question is which 350? In @DealGroundCRE, brokers output all of the Wendy’s that have less than 5 years left on their lease, which yields nearly 100 properties (20 seconds).  They run ownership research (5-10 minutes) and then sort them in the list view by number of months remaining on the lease (and option periods). Immediately, they call and email owners who are wondering if their location is on the chopping block. DealGround’s mantra is to enable brokers to spend more of their time cultivating relationships with owners and helping them navigate tricky situations.  And less time on the research part of the process. #SmartProspecting

@Dealgroundcre’s Proprietary Data Reveals the Retail CRE Market Got More Selective in Q2. After months of building optimism heading into 2026 📈 , falling inflation, expected Fed rate cuts, and hopes for a transaction surge were upended by the Iran War 🛫 , which shifted the narrative dramatically. DealGround’s proprietary national dataset of retail deals closing between December 1, 2025, and May 31, 2026, captures exactly how the market responded. We compared the first period (Dec 25–Feb 26) against the second (Mar 26–May 26) across a large sample of transactions. The market didn’t freeze, but it did become sharper, more disciplined, and far more selective. Key Metrics from DealGround Data: -Aggregate dollar volume in disclosure states dropped 21.6%, and larger deals got hit the hardest. 📉 -Transaction count declined 13.8% nationally. -Dollar-weighted discount from asking price to sale price widened dramatically from 5.2% to 13.5%. Sellers of large retail deals in particular had to accept larger discounts to their list prices -Median cap rates rose from 6.55% to 6.75% (a 20 bps increase) as buyers successfully negotiated lower prices. The median discount moved only modestly (4.7% → 5.1%), indicating most completed deals remained within a normal negotiating range. The bigger gap came from a smaller number of larger transactions where buyers demanded (and received) meaningful concessions This wasn’t a collapse, but it was a reset in buyer power. Good properties with durable income, strong locations, credit tenants, and predictable cash flow continue to trade. Sellers who price realistically and prepare thoroughly are still closing. Buyers have become far less willing to stretch on price, financing assumptions, or risk DealGround’s unique edge shines here. Unlike traditional reports that rely only on lagging closed-sale data, we track properties from the moment they hit the market: offering memoranda, price changes, marketing history, and how listings evolve (or disappear). This forward-looking visibility lets us spot shifts in real time, such as declining new listings, rising price reductions, widening ask-to-sale gaps, and shifting buyer appetites.  We spot trends before they fully appear in public stats. Bottom line: The retail investment market is open for business, but only for the right deals at the right numbers. Those who adapt fastest, who use better data, sharper pricing, and more efficient execution, will thrive. DealGround was built exactly for this because we help brokers, buyers, and sellers prospect smarter.  DealGround enables an intelligence advantage to move with confidence while others wait for clarity. Check out the full article here. dealground.com/articles/the-…

So awesome to talk to a customer who says “wow you’ve really done a lot in a couple of months”. @DealGroundCRE @alexesber