Credit market turmoil continued to take a toll on commercial property prices in February, when Moody's/RCA Commercial Property Price Indices national all-property composite index declined for a second consecutive month.
Moody's/RCA CPPI measures price changes in U.S. commercial real estate based on "repeat-sales," or completed sales of the same properties.
February's 0.2% decline was driven by a drop in office and industrial property prices.
"The slippage in commercial property prices in February follows on the heels of January's decline, which was the first since the post-crisis recovery began in early 2010," Tad Philipp, Moody's director of commercial real estate research, said in a press release Tuesday.
"Recent turmoil in the capital markets is now being felt in the commercial property sector, consistent with reports that some acquisition prices have been negotiated lower to reflect the higher cost of debt," Philipp said.
The decline in the overall index was driven by a drop in prices in the core commercial sector of CBD office, down 5.2% in the past three months, Philipp says. Commercial business district office has been the hottest sector over the past five years, but the coldest over the past three months.
Two of the other core commercial sectors, suburban office and industrial, also saw price declines in the past three months. The only core commercial sector to buck the trend was retail, which was up 1.2% over the past three months.
Meanwhile, apartment prices continue to increase but at a decelerating pace, rising by 0.7% in the last month and 2.0% in the past three months. Apartment prices have not borne the full brunt of disruption in the capital markets because much of their debt funding comes from government-sponsored enterprises.
