Compared to what?

Just where does the commercial real estate market stand?

What are the numbers?

Let's take just Middlesex County, Massachusetts. This county contains 54 cities and towns and has abut 1.3 million in population. It runs from urban and high-end Cambridge to rural and low-tide Ashby, to Lowell, Watham and Sommerville. Some of it's towns are Lincoln, Concord, Billerica and Framingham.

In the past 30 days, per MLS, there have been 28 Commercial real estate transactions.( 10 leases and 17 sales in all.) with total volumes of $6,005,788. But what does this compare to?

11-27-09 30 days commercial = 28 Transactions with a volume of 6,005,788
11-27-08 30 days commercial = 31 Transactions with a volume of 7,966,008
11-27-07 30 days commercial = 11 Transactions with a volume of 6,793,390
11-27-06 30 days commercial = 23 Transactions with a volume of 13,326,006
11-27-99 30 days commercial = 10 Transactions with a volume of 5,640,100
11=27-95 30 days commercial = 5 Transactions with a volume of 1,760,000.

We are almost down 44% in sales volume since the same period in 2006.
But we are doing much better than was done in 1995!

How des commercial square with residential sales same time period same county?
The top 5 residential real estate brokerage firms alone sold $ 128,246,000 for the same time period. Residential sales ( 1 family, condos, multi families out-sold commercial by a factor of 21.3
times!


Competition for these commercial transactions in 2009.

In Middlesex Country there are 54 cities and town, with a guess average of 5 brokerage firms per community equals 270 real estate firms ( a low, low number) If each firm has 6 agents ( another low guess Number) = 1,620 real estate agents chasing 28 transactions. Or there are 57.85 agents for every one commercial transaction.

These numbers reflect the MLS commercial activities and not the entire commercial market.

Bill McInerney