As the maxim goes, the quickest way to a man’s heart (or a woman’s) is through his stomach. Similarly, it appears the quickest way to get higher rental rates from tenants is also through their stomachs. It’s called the Whole Foods Effect, which has shown that apartment buildings with a Whole Foods Market on the ground floor commands higher rents from tenants.
RCLCO, a real estate advisory firm, first research this phenomenon in 2016 when it did a quantitative analysis that concluded apartments with a ground-floor Whole Foods tenant added value to the development by driving rental premiums, enhancing absorption and accelerating rent growth. Since that analysis five years ago, the high-end grocer market has changed in ways small and large, prompting the firm to re-examine the findings of its prior analysis. As a result of those market changes, two important questions emerged: first, since its acquisition by Amazon, has Whole Foods’ impact on apartment performance cha
