New Commercial Real Estate Statistics from CoStar
Posted by Ted C. Jones on February 9, 2012
Images for this post are temporaraly unavailable.
CoStar, a premier provider of real estate information, now has the best series for commercial real estate sales volumes, as unlike others, it is not restricted to minimum price levels nor to specific types of ownership. For those not familiar with CoStar, the company is publicly listed and traded on the NASDAQ under the ticker CSGP with a current market cap of $1.46 billion (calculated by multiplying the number of shares outstanding times the current share price).
The table below shows the total U.S. annual sales volume of commercial real estate since 2000. It also relates each year to the peak year and calculates a percentage change from the prior year. In 2011, for example, commercial real estate sales were up 33.4 percent from 2010 but still fell 47.6 percent less than the peak year of sales in 2007.
These same data are shown graphically as follows:
It is interesting to note how quickly sales volumes in commercial real estate are recovering and that both commercial real estate and housing peaked at approximately the same time, perhaps proving the old adage “So Goes Roof Tops So Goes Commercial Real Estate.” Although this time, commercial real estate is recovering at a much more rapid pace. This also confirms one of my mega trends this year in that last year and this year was/is the time to overweight in real estate investments.
Coming soon to the blog is CoStar’s repeat sales price index (the same property being purchased and sold). This CoStar index is akin to the residential version of the Case-Shiller home price index—but unlike other commercial price indexes is not restricted by the type of ownership (such as pension funds) or by minimum prices.
In full disclosure—I do not currently own CoStar in my stock portfolio.
Ted
