Chris Maling has built a career around shopping centers despite a personal aversion to shopping.
Maling, who just joined real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield as an executive director of capital markets, has spent nearly four decades immersed in retail property. He's worked at most of the nation's top brokerages, where he helped clients buy, sell and reposition real estate.
"I love selling retail, I love everything about retail, but I personally cannot stand shopping," he told CoStar News.
Maling said he doesn't have a preference on fashion, letting family members guide his clothing purchases. That helps in his job, he added, letting him look at shopping centers as a real estate, rather than a personal, investment.
His approach appears to have paid off. He's now moving on to help expand Cushman's burgeoning retail sales business by putting together deals for shopping center investors across Southern California and the southwestern United States. He's taking with him lessons learned about breaking up retail properties and extolling the virtues of low-work investing to clients.
Cushman is ramping up its retail business to capitalize on rebounding demand in the sector, with U.S. retail property sales volume jumping 31% year over year in early 2026 and deal activity now running ahead of pre-pandemic levels, according to CoStar data.
At Cushman & Wakefield, Maling will help clients navigate an increasingly complex retail landscape where higher interest rates and shifting valuations are making retail real estate a more nuanced investment. The pandemic, meanwhile, has reshaped how shoppers interact with malls, with many investors now prioritizing experience-driven concepts.
To pilot the changing landscape, Maling will lean into the kind of creative dealmaking and advisory work that has defined his career. The goal, he said, is to create a platform where brokers operate less like competitors and more like partners working toward the same outcome for clients who are now coming off the sidelines to close deals.
A career in retail
Maling is based in downtown Los Angeles, where he has spent most of his career.
His path traces back to a chance encounter at the University of Southern California in 1987, when a real estate investment broker's presentation pulled him away from an initial interest in investment banking.
"I was just fascinated," Maling said, recalling how that moment led to an introduction that launched his career.
He went on to spend 21 years at Marcus & Millichap, where he gravitated toward retail after starting in multiple asset classes. Over time, he carved out a niche in multitenant retail and began experimenting with creative deal structures.
One early breakthrough came when he proposed breaking up a shopping center into multiple deals, selling off buildings and anchor spaces individually. The strategy generated about $30 million for the client, far exceeding expectations and helping to popularize similar approaches in the market.
That deal also helped push him deeper into the world of net lease investing, where he became known for pitching what he jokingly calls the "Mai Tai investment." The idea: Investors collect steady rent from tenants like McDonald's while "sitting on the beach… and your smartphone goes off saying… we just got the rent check."
Maling later moved to Colliers, drawn by the ability to tap into multiple service lines, such as leasing, property management and valuation. That broader platform allowed him to deepen client relationships and create what he described as "connectivity and stickiness."
After a stint at Avison Young as a principal partner, Maling fielded interest from several major firms before choosing Cushman & Wakefield due to the firm's platform and relationships, and the chance to grow a retail platform from his backyard.
A relationship business
There's been a renewed emphasis on retail six years after the pandemic, Maling noted.
"The pendulum has swung the opposite way," he said.
He plans to emphasize collaboration across teams, moving away from what he described as a more fragmented, competitive brokerage culture. The goal is a "we" mentality that better serves clients across the full lifecycle of ownership, he said.
Still, Maling sees broader challenges facing the industry, particularly around remote work and the erosion of in-person mentorship.
He plans to give his staff the same advice he gives his daughters: get off your phones and get into the real world.
"This business is about relationships," he said, adding that professionals benefit from face-to-face interaction that can't be replicated over email or Zoom. That philosophy is rooted in decades spent working within a tight-knit network in downtown Los Angeles.
For Maling, the next phase is about building both a pipeline and a bench of retail deals for Cushman, where he said success will hinge as much on mentoring the next generation as it will on closing the next deal.