The final chapter of Sears is coming into view. Once the largest retailer in the United States, the company is now down to just five remaining stores, and industry experts say even those days are likely numbered. The looming closures are more than a corporate footnote—they mark the collapse of one of the most ambitious, and controversial, retail turnaround strategies of the past two decades.
According to reporting by The New York Times, the unraveling is closely tied to the fate of Seritage Growth Properties, the real estate investment trust created to unlock value from Sears’ vast property portfolio.
From Retail Giant to Real Estate Bet
Founded in 1892 in Chicago, Sears began as a mail-order pioneer before growing into a nationwide department store powerhouse. That legacy made its decline all the more striking when hedge fund manager Edward Lampert acquired Sears out of bankruptcy in 2003.
Lampert’s thesis was not rooted in retail reinvention but in real estate. Sears owned most of its more than 3,400 stores at the time, and Lampert believed those properties could be repurposed or monetized more effectively than the retail business itself. That vision led to the creation of Seritage, which gradually took control of hundreds of former Sears locations.
Seritage’s Promise—and Its Collapse
In its early years, Seritage appeared to validate Lampert’s strategy. Shares of the REIT once traded above $50. Today, they hover around $4, underscoring how dramatically expectations have reversed.
The New York Times reports that Seritage is now selling off its remaining assets to pay down a $1.6 billion loan from Berkshire Hathaway. Seritage CEO Adam Metz told the paper that while asset sales are the priority, the company remains open to alternative transactions that might boost shareholder value.
From a StoreTechNews perspective, this is a critical point: the real estate play was highly sensitive to timing. By the time Seritage began aggressively repositioning properties, retail space had already gone through years of structural decline and shifting demand.
Conflicts, Lawsuits, and a Shrinking Core Business
Lampert’s dual role—as Sears CEO and Seritage chairman—proved deeply controversial. The arrangement placed him on both sides of major transactions, and after Sears filed for bankruptcy, creditors sued, arguing those deals favored Seritage at Sears’ expense.
Meanwhile, the core retail business continued to erode. Big-box rivals such as Walmart and Home Depot expanded aggressively, while e-commerce reshaped consumer behavior. Lampert attempted to position Sears as a competitor to Amazon, but longtime Sears customers still preferred traditional, in-person shopping—without the modern store experience competitors were offering.
By 2018, Sears filed for bankruptcy again, burdened by more than $11 billion in losses and reduced to roughly 700 stores.
Too Late to Unlock Real Estate Value
In recent years, Seritage tried to capitalize on historically low availability of retail space and rising property values. The effort failed to deliver meaningful returns.
As Brandon Svec, national director of analytics at CoStar, told the Times, the initiative simply came too late. The most valuable window for extracting real estate upside had already closed.
What Sears’ Collapse Teaches the Retail Industry
Sears’ story highlights three hard lessons for modern retail:
Real estate alone cannot save a broken retail model. Property value may buy time, but it cannot replace sustained investment in customer experience and operations.
Timing is everything. Asset-heavy strategies depend on market cycles; miss them, and even premium properties lose leverage.
Retail transformation requires focus. Split leadership and conflicting incentives can accelerate decline rather than reverse it.
As Sears prepares to fade from the physical retail landscape, its demise serves as a cautionary tale—not just for department stores, but for any retailer betting that financial engineering can substitute for genuine reinvention.
This article references data and reporting from[ChainStoreAge]