The Brazilian market for shopping malls witnesses a unique moment in history. Supported by credit expansion and the increase on individuals income, the retail sector remains strong, which keeps boosting demand for sales areas in malls. Traditionally aiming higher income classes, recently this began to change with the income growth of the lower classes, which culminated in the appearance of a new consumer market: the emerging middle class. Reflecting the economic stability and development of capital markets, companies finally have access to safe and low cost funding alternatives to finance their investments, which caused the number of malls in the country to grow sharply. The valuation of malls projects is traditionally made with the Discounted Cash Flow methodology. Although widespread, the effectiveness of this methodology has been criticized as it does not consider the value of existing flexibilities in the project, also known as real options. Options to expand the mall or build a commercial enterprise on the unused land, can significantly increase the expected return of the projects and should be taken into account during the valuation process. This work presents the application of real options theory to assess a project of mall development, considering that the original project could be expanded (expansion option) or abandoned (abandonment option). As a result, the real options analyzed added BRL 11,01 million, which represent an increase of 7,55 per cent to the Project value, or 110,0 per cent to the NPV, a relevant amount and that should not be disregarded.