Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Commercial Calamity? S&P/GRA Commercial Real Estate Index November 2007

Like the MIT/CRE Property Index, Standard & Poor’s also tracks commercial real estate (CRE) prices for various commercial property types.

Today’s results, including data gathered up to November 2007, further confirms the recent slowdown seen in the commercial real estate markets with the National composite index declining 1.36% since the peak set in August 2007.

Most components experienced weakness as compared to respective peaks set between July and August 2007 with the Office component showing a 5.24% peak decline, the Retail component showing a 2.01% peak decline, the Warehouse component showing a 1.57% peak decline and the Apartment component showing an increase of 2.44% as compared to November 2006.

The charts below show the National index and the component indices since 1993 (click for larger).

Notice that growth of the National index has slowed measurably since the peak annual appreciation rates seen at the end of 2005.

At the rate of deceleration seen over the last 2.5 years, it’s possible that CRE could begin to show negative year-over-year growth in the next 6 to 9 months.