Monday, May 23, 2011

CRE Prices Decline to Post-Crash Low

From Bloomberg:

U.S. commercial property prices fell to a post-recession low in March as sales of financially distressed assets weighed on the market, according to Moody’s Investors Service. The Moody’s/REAL Commercial Property Price Index dropped 4.2% from February and is now 47% below the peak of October 2007, Moody’s said in a statement today.

The national index has fallen for four straight months as sales of distressed properties hurt real estate values. The index “continues to bounce along the bottom as a large share of distressed transactions preclude a meaningful recovery of overall market prices,” Tad Philipp, Moody’s director of commercial real estate research, said in the statement. “Indeed, the post-peak low in price has been reached in the same period as a post-peak high in distressed transactions has been recorded.”

No Recovery Signals
The overall index shows “no sign of recovery,” Moody’s said. Almost a third of all March transactions measured by Moody’s were considered distressed, meaning the properties’ owners faced foreclosure, had difficulty covering their mortgage payments or experienced other financial problems. It was the largest proportion of distressed property sales in the history of the index, Moody’s said.

Price increases for high-profile properties in major markets “appear to have taken a breather, providing less of a positive effect on overall market results than it has in recent months,” according to today’s report. Transactions involving such assets also fell, meaning that those properties that did sell were more likely to be troubled, Moody’s said.

CoStar Report
Prices for investment-grade properties in the U.S. fell 4.9% in March from the previous month, CoStar Group Inc. (CSGP), a real estate data service based in Washington, said May 11. Values were up 2.2% from March 2010 and down 38 percent from the peak in June 2007, according to the company. CoStar, unlike Moody’s, tracks transactions of less than $2.5 million.