Monday, November 19, 2007

Commercial real estate falling

Commercial real estate lags about 1 1/2 years behind residential housing, and now a report from MIT indicates that it's now falling. Here's the commentary at MIT:

The drop in the MIT quarterly transaction-based index (TBI) may not only spell the end of a five-year rally that saw commercial property prices effectively double, but it may also signal that weakness in the housing market is spilling over into commercial real estate.

"The fall in our index is the first solid, quantitative evidence that the subprime mortgage debacle, which hit the broader capital markets in August, may be spreading to the commercial property markets," stated MIT Center for Real Estate Director David Geltner.

The TBI decline in the third quarter of 2007 marks its first quarterly downturn since the third quarter of 2003, when prices fell 2.4 percent. The last time prices fell more than in the third quarter of 2007 was in the fourth quarter of 2001 (9/11, recession), when they fell 3.9 percent.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/commercial-1114.html

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