Rational exuberance. That’s the feeling expressed by commercial real estate professionals in the latest CRE Market Confidence Index released by LightBox.
According to the third quarter index, which surveys commercial real estate professionals across the country, these pros are optmistic about the future of the CRE business, largely thanks to steady investment activity. But this optimism is tempered by concerns about the COVID variants’ effect on the market and inflation.
The survey found that 45 percent of CRE professionals surveyed in the third quarter said that commercial real estate market conditions were improving, while 49 percent said they were stabilizing and 6 percent said they were worsening.
Optimism was a bit higher in the second quarter of the year. Then, 54 percent of respondents said CRE market conditions were improving, 38 percent said they were stabilizing and 8 percent said they were worsening.
A majority of respondents told LightBox that their own CRE business activity was on the rise during the third quarter. According to survey, 23 percent of respondents said their business activity was increasing substantially during the third quarter, 33 percent said it was increasing slightly and 35 percent said it was the same.
A total of 8 percent said their business activity was decreasing slightly, while 1 percent said it was decreasing substantially during the third quarter.
When asked to predict how they expect their 2021 annual volume to compare to 2020, nearly one-third — 30 percent — of respondents said they expect a substantial increase over last year. Another 49 percent said they expected a slight increase.
