Triple Vision
I am trying to make sense of this Bloomberg article.  It's about as clear as an average cap rate.  The article summarizes commercial real estate price valuations from Moody's, CoStar Group and Green Street Advisors, Inc.  All agree that prices have dropped from their 2007 peak, but there is some big discrepencies in their data:

The Moody’s/REAL Commercial Property Price Index dropped 4.2 percent from February and is now 47 percent below the peak of October 2007, Moody’s said in a statement today.


Prices for investment-grade properties in the U.S. fell 4.9 percent in March from the previous month, CoStar Group Inc. (CSGP), a real estate data service based in Washington, said May 11. Values were up 2.2 percent from March 2010 and down 38 percent from the peak in June 2007, according to the company.


Green Street Advisors Inc., a real estate research company in Newport Beach, California, reported rising prices in April. Commercial property values increased 2 percent from the previous month and 18 percent from a year earlier, the company said May 5. Prices are down 13 percent from the August 2007 peak.

The dates differ and types of properties in the indexes differ.  For example, Green Street includes pending sales, and CoStar excludes properties below a certain size.  The quote below from an economist at a large commercial real estate brokerage made the most sense:

“We have reached the point in the cycle where there is a clear trend in improving demand, falling vacancy and stabilizing rents,” Kevin Thorpe, chief economist at brokerage Cassidy Turley in Washington, said in a telephone interview before the report. “Investors are buying well before commercial real estate has reached a full recovery.”

With data this varied, I have to keep repeating the old axiom that all real estate is local.