Real estate research has a long and extensive history of analyzing rent dynamics. Due to data availability constraints the retail market has been the least researched segment of main real estate sectors, despite its import role within the real estate universe (in the US for example the overall REIT market allocates 25.56% of its capital to retail whereas residential and office take up 17.08% and 16.31% respectively, EY Global REIT Report 2007). Existing research of retail markets has mostly focused on the building level thereby examining return determinants at the micro level. In this paper we examine retail rents at a broader level which provides insight into the general trends that have an impact on retail rents. More specifically we analyze retail rents at the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) level by applying an error correction model in line with Hendershott, MacGregor and White (2002) in a study covering almost three decades of retail rent data for the 14 largest MSAís of the United States. The purpose of the study is to gain additional insight into the determinants and dynamics of retail rents by application of state of the art methodological techniques.