Sears’ store properties — purchased decades ago, when it was fashionable for retailers to own their own real estate to control costs and determine their own fate — have been sold off in large and small chunks in recent years.
In 2015, Sears spun off hundreds of properties into a REIT that is chaired and partly owned by Sears CEO Eddie Lampert. The past and present property sales are part of a larger strategy to cash in on some of the retailer’s most valuable assets to clot financial bleeding and, as Lampert and his team have pledged, return the company to profitability.