Disclaimer: I am not an attorney and this article is not intended as a substitute for advice from the appropriate legal, zoning, financial, construction and/or tax professionals. This information is provided for educational purposes only and is made without warranties or representations

San Diego strip mall cap rates have held steady in that 5.0% to 6.5% range throughout 2025 and this stability is interesting, especially with the volatility we’ve seen with rising interest rates and the heavy deal activity in the market. Investors are discovering that the accurate cap rate calculation is actually the difference between landing a profitable acquisition and making an expensive mistake in this $398-per-square-foot market.

Strip malls call for a completely different set of valuation skills compared to your usual commercial property analysis. You have multiple tenants that each generate their own income streams and you also have to factor in how much they depend on anchor tenants and a combination of lease terms that create risk profiles far more tangled than what you’d see with single-tenant properties.

Experienced investors use a framework to size up these multi-tenant retail assets that starts with the numbers. You need your NOI calculation to capture every bit of revenue and every expense line and you also need the market benchmarking so you can see how location and tenant quality can shape your returns. You want something you can actually count on.

Let’s talk about it together!

How Cap Rates Work for Strip Malls

Cap rates work a little differently for strip malls than they do for most other types of commercial properties you run into. A capitalization rate is a way to see what annual return you can expect from a property based on all the rental income each year. You just take the property’s net operating income and divide it by what you paid for that place – it’s a standard formula.

Strip malls throw some curveballs into the picture though. Each tenant has their own lease that expires at different times. Some pay more rent than others and if your anchor tenant decides to leave that changes everything pretty fast.

I’ve seen plenty of new investors assume that a high cap rate means they’ve found a great deal. That’s not always the case though. That 12% cap rate might look tempting until you find that the property needs big repairs or sits in an area that’s not doing well. Experienced strip mall investors know to look past the surface numbers. They look at tenant quality and lease lengths before they get too excited about any cap rate number.

Cap rates are fantastic when you need to compare different options against one another. You can look at ten different strip malls in San Diego and see which ones are going to give you better returns. Just remember though – the number alone doesn’t tell you everything you need to know. Location matters. Tenant lineup matters too. Even something like the age of the parking lot matters if that strip mall is going to make you money.

Calculate Your Strip Center Net Income

Your strip mall investment’s net operating income calculation calls for accuracy. To be honest, one small oversight can throw off your entire analysis.

Base rent is the obvious income source. That’s just the beginning. Percentage rent from anchor tenants is another revenue stream that investors like to miss. Plenty of retail leases have escalation clauses built in. Once a tenant’s sales go over the set thresholds they owe extra rent on top of their base amount. CAM reimbursements are another income source – these cover all the common area maintenance costs that get shared by all tenants.

Vacancy reserves get missed quite a bit more than they should be – even when the property is completely leased. Experienced investors usually set aside anywhere from five to ten percent of the gross income for possible vacancies. That’s a smart idea since tenants move out all the time.

Management fees are another expense that gets forgotten way too much. Even if you’re going to manage the property yourself, include this line item in your calculations. Your time is worth something and any future buyer is going to factor management costs into their evaluation of the property anyway.

Strip malls in San Diego usually run their expense ratios somewhere between thirty-five and forty-five percent of gross income. Prime locations like La Jolla might land on the lower end of that range whereas older centers in areas like El Cajon could push toward the higher end. Location matters. Age and condition of your property matter just as much.

You should approach the seller’s pro forma with healthy skepticism. Sellers have every incentive to present the most optimistic scenarios possible with rock-bottom costs and maximum income projections. Look at the actual historical numbers instead and make some realistic adjustments based on what can be verified.

How to Calculate Your Cap Rate

Once you have your NOI figured out from the previous section, we can move on to the cap rate calculation for that strip mall you’re looking at in San Diego.

It’s a quick calculation – just take your Net Operating Income, divide it by the property value and multiply by 100 to get your cap rate as a percentage. Here’san actual example with a strip mall in Mira Mesa that’s listed for $3.2 million and generates $280,000 in annual NOI. Divide $280,000 by $3,200,000 and you get 0.0875. Multiply by 100 and that becomes an 8.75% cap rate.

Extra costs that come with the buy also need accounting for. Between closing fees (around $50,000) and immediate repairs like parking lot resurfacing (another $75,000), a lot of investors add these costs to the buy price before they calculate. With our example, that means you’d divide $280,000 by $3,325,000 instead and brings your cap rate down to 8.42%. Not bad.

This raises an important question about which value to use in your calculation. Buying that same strip mall two years ago for $2.8 million but seeing it now worth $3.2 million, makes the higher figure usually the better choice.

Most experienced investors use the latest market value because it lets you compare your returns fairly against other investment opportunities.

The San Diego Strip Mall Market

San Diego’s strip mall market has its own characteristics that set it apart from other big cities. Cap rates can vary quite a bit depending on where you are – you might find properties that are selling at around 4% along the coast. Head inland though and those same numbers can reach 7% or even higher. Once you see what’s actually behind these values, the wide range starts to make sense.

A strip mall that’s walking distance from the beach in an area like La Jolla or Del Mar commands high rents and serves a customer base with plenty of disposable income. Investors are usually willing to accept lower returns because these properties seem like much safer bets. Put that exact same property in El Cajon or Escondido though and suddenly you’re looking at completely different numbers.

Military bases are scattered all over San Diego County and each one creates its own little economic bubble. Strip malls that are close to places like Camp Pendleton or Naval Base San Diego do well because they get steady foot traffic and the income stream is very predictable. These properties usually sell at cap rates that are about half a percent lower than similar centers in other areas. Buyers care about who’s actually shopping at these places and military families are a reliable customer base that’s hard to beat.

I see this pattern show up again and again in the recent sales data. Last quarter, a well-kept strip mall with national chain tenants near UTC changed hands at a 4.5% cap rate. At the same time, a similar-sized center down in Chula Vista with mostly local tenants sold for 6.2%. That 170-basis-point spread is mostly about two factors – how strong your tenant roster is and how desirable your location happens to be.

San Diego’s cap rates usually run about 25 to 50 basis points higher than Los Angeles or Orange County across the board. Our market down here just isn’t quite as competitive and that means buyers usually have more room to work with during deal discussions. Tourist-heavy areas like Mission Beach or the Gaslamp Quarter are interesting outliers though – their cap rates fall during the summer months as retail sales peak and cash flow looks most attractive to investors.

Other Ways to Value Benefits

Cap rates can tell you quite a bit about strip malls here in San Diego, and most investors lean heavily on them during the deal evaluation. They’re just not enough on their own though. Sometimes you need to look at the same numbers from a few different angles to get the full picture of what you’re buying.

Cash-on-cash returns matter quite a bit if financing is part of your plan and this measure will teach you what percentage you’ll actually earn on the cash you put in. A strip mall could have a decent cap rate but still throw off great cash-on-cash results if you can lock in friendly loan terms. That’s why most buyers put this number near the top of the list.

Price per square foot gives you another great way to compare properties that would otherwise look similar. Two strip malls with nearly identical cap rates can sell at very different prices per square foot. Properties with newer construction or a better tenant lineup usually command a premium, and this metric helps you find those deals where the cap rate alone could mislead you.

Internal rate of return matters quite a bit if property improvements are a part of your strategy. Maybe you come across a tired strip mall with below-market rents, and can push those numbers up over time. You won’t see any room for growth captured in the cap rate at all. IRR calculations let you map out the returns after the renovation and re-leasing at market rates.

Gross rent multipliers work great for quick comparisons across multiple properties. Just divide the buying price by the annual gross rent and you’ll get your multiplier. Most San Diego strip malls I look at trade between 8 and 12 times gross rent. Something outside that range is absolutely worth a deeper look.

Common Cap Rate Mistakes

Calculating cap rates for strip malls requires you to watch out for some common mistakes that can throw your numbers way off. One of the biggest errors that investors make is counting capital expenditures in their net operating income calculations. Roof replacements and parking lot repairs don’t belong in there at all – they’re completely different from your standard rental income and operating costs.

Another trap for investors is plugging in vacancy rates that don’t match what’s actually happening in the market. San Diego strip malls usually sit at around 5% to 10% vacancy. Some investors still use 2% because it makes their numbers look better on paper. You also need to factor in the free-rent periods that landlords hand out to lure new tenants. Ignore three months of free rent on a five-year lease and your cap-rate numbers will be way off base.

Calculations can get extra tough here. Some combine actual NOI with stabilized NOI. That messes everything up. They’ll take the latest income numbers from a half-empty strip mall and pretend that’s what they can expect going forward, or assume full occupancy even though the property hasn’t hit that level in years. Either way it hurts your investment decisions.

Residential cap-rate math just doesn’t work for commercial strip malls so new investors usually make expensive mistakes here. Single-family houses and strip mall properties work under completely different laws in real estate investing. Income structure is different and operating costs work differently and the things that shape property value follow separate patterns altogether.

Worse yet, some investors will deliberately manipulate their cap-rate calculations and change around some expense figures. Or they’ll lean on some creative accounting to make their strip mall investments look a lot more desirable than they actually are. These tactics definitely make it murkier and can cloud what a property is actually worth – especially compared with residential opportunities.

Are You Ready to Make Changes to Your Portfolio?

Cap rate calculations for San Diego strip malls need you to know the basic math and also know the local market conditions that affect these numbers. Strip mall properties in San Diego usually see cap rates between 4% and 6.5%. Each deal changes based on location, tenant combination and a few other things that can change the numbers around.

To improve in this area, you should have property listings and watch for all the common mistakes that catch investors off guard. Even experienced investors make errors – they move through their NOI calculations too fast or miss market changes that can completely change what a property is actually worth. You should take time to double-check your math against recent comparable sales in the area – this extra step can be tedious but will save you from expensive mistakes that you’ll regret for years.

Cap rates give you a look at possible returns on a strip mall deal. But actually making money with these investments means that you need to look at the bigger picture in your local market. One number isn’t enough. San Diego’s market has been pretty stable – even when the wider economy has been unpredictable. Local conditions can still change faster, and other investors can start changing their strategies to different sectors. Your best chances of success are to work with professionals to get through all these variables without missing any important signs.

I’m Erik Egelko at Egelko Enterprises, a top-ranked broker in the state and ranked in the top 1% of brokers across the country. I’ll show you how I became the top commercial real estate broker in San Diego County with over 100 million dollars in closed property transactions.

Reach out to us today for a free consultation to see how we help you maximize your returns on your commercial real estate property – whether buying, selling, or renting out your commercial property.

If you have any questions about this post or anything related to commercial real estate in California, I’m always here to help. You can always feel free to reach out; I’d be more than happy to assist in any way I can.