For the second month in a row, commercial real estate transactions slowed. Transaction volume was 10% lower year over year, with just 1,800 deals overall, according to monthly data provided by Moody's.

Commercial real estate transactions in November fell 10% compared to the same month the previous year, marking the second straight month of declining deal activity. The slowdown is attributed to persistent high interest rates, ongoing economic uncertainty, and increased caution among lenders and investors.

Despite the overall decrease in transactions, deals over $100 million increased by 51% year-over-year, pushing the average deal size to $14.2 million. Most top sales involved Class A properties, with multifamily apartments leading in volume, followed by office and industrial assets. The largest deal in November was in the medical office sector, with data centers also seeing significant investment.

Commercial real estate transactions slowed in November

For the second month in a row, we're seeing a significant cool-down in commercial real estate deal-making. With interest rates still high and all that continued uncertainty in the broader economy, it's just getting tougher to get the deals done. Now, I've been watching this space for a few decades now on CNBC, but now we're getting these amazing monthly spreadsheets of the actual deals provided exclusively to us by Moody's for the property play. That's my new platform dedicated to commercial real estate investors. The latest one, which covers November, showed transaction volume down 10% from November of last year. October was the first month deal-making went negative year-over-year since the post-Fed rate hike recovery began in early 2024. But this wasn't just a continuation of that trend. November transactions were even lower than November of 2020, which, of course, was the first year of the COVID pandemic. Now, Moody's head of research says it's all about the higher-for-longer interest rates, policy uncertainty, a tenuous labor market, and caution on the part of CRE lenders and investors. Investors are leaning toward larger-scale acquisitions and bigger, higher-quality assets. For example, the volume of all deals dropped significantly during the month, except for the deals greater than $100 million, which were 51% higher year-over-year. That pushed the average deal size in November to $14.2 million, compared with the average of $12 million since the start of 2019. In addition, the majority of assets in the top 50 sales were in Class A. That means the newest, highest-quality properties. Where were the most deals? Multifamily apartments, followed by office and then industrial. Offices are still being bought up either for conversions or because they're still seeing those big discounts. The biggest deal in November, though, was a kind of under-the-radar space, medical office. These are the outpatient buildings you go to for treatment after or instead of the hospital. The second biggest deal was, of course, a data center complex, because we just can't get enough of those spaces where we put all that AI. Transcription by CastingWords

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