952 - It’s Official—Commercial Real Estate Is Collapsing by Andrew Syrios

The residential real estate market is doing better than most had expected after interest rates more than doubled last year. Prices declined nationally each month from July 2022 to January 2023 (although never by more than 1% per month). However, prices came back up 0.2% in February. Ironically, February was the first month that prices dipped year-over-year, interrupting what was a record 131-month run of ever-increasing prices. It’s too early to say, but it appears that despite high rates, the residential market is stabilizing.

It’s not quite so pretty for commercial real estate, particularly office, though.

The Office Recession

Back in October of last year, I noted that “broadly speaking, the outlook for commercial real estate, specifically office buildings, is not great. And large office buildings, in particular, are doing poorly and will have difficulty in the coming years.” The reasons were threefold. First, the pandemic and lockdowns shuttered a lot of businesses, many permanently, and this led to a general deterioration of the existing stock and reduced demand for office space.

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