Market Cools
According to a recent report by real estate research firm Real Capital Analytics, the commercial real estate market is cooling. Sales for office, industrial, retail, apartment and hotels rose 14 percent in the first half of 2006 to $155 billion, compared to 62 percent in the first half of 2005.
In the office sector, a record $30 billion of office properties were sold in the second quarter, an 8 percent increase over a year earlier. For the first half of the year, $51.6 billion worth of office property traded hands, up 11 percent from last year.
For apartment buildings, second-quarter sales totaled $17.7 billion, only 3 percent higher than the year-earlier quarter. In the first half of 2006, more than $43.1 billion of apartment sales were recorded, up 21 percent from a year ago.
For retail real estate, a lack of shopping centers and malls for sale was behind the 35 percent sales decline, to $10.8 billion in the quarter. In the first half of the year, $19.2 billion of retail property were sold, down 25 percent from a year earlier.
Industrial real estate posted a 4 percent rise in sales in the second quarter of 2006 compared with a year ago. Sales totaled $10.1 billion. Sales topped $20.8 billion in the first half of 2006, up 26 percent