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For the second month in a row, heat came out of the commercial real estate market in November.
Transaction volume was 10% lower than November 2024, with just 1,800 deals overall, according to monthly data provided by Moody’s as a media exclusive to CNBC’s Property Play. It tracks the top 50 commercial real estate property sales across the U.S., in core segments of multifamily, office, industrial, retail and hotel.
October was the first month of negative year-over-year transaction volume growth since the post-Fed rate hike recovery began in early 2024, but this was not just a continuation of that trend. November transactions were even lower than November 2020, the first year of the Covid pandemic.
“This stems from the combination of higher-for-longer interest rates, policy uncertainty, a tenuous labor market, and caution on the part of CRE lenders and investors,” said Kevin Fagan, head of CRE capital market research at Moody’s. “However, market liquidity is still selectively open at two-thirds the volume of pre-pandemic, with a concentration in greater scale.”
