PwC’s quarterly commercial real estate review just hit my desk.  I have a particular affinity for this survey-based review — it was founded about 30 years ago by Peter Korpacz, MAI, an alumni of the Real Estate Counseling Group of America and an acquaintance of mine.  PwC took it over a few years ago, and have done wonderfully with it.

The entire report, at 106 pages, is far too robust for a simple summary.  However, a key metric is the review of capitalization Rate changes by property type (e.g. — warehouse, apartments) and offices by region (e.g. — Manhattan, DC, San Francisco).  A cap rate, of course, is the ratio of a property’s net operating income to its sales price.  Declining cap rates on a broad front can indicate the onset of a recession, but differential cap rate changes (rising in one market, declining in another) may suggest differing sector views by real estate investors.  By property type, this is what we appear to have today.

For example, warehouse cap rates currently average 5.27% nationally, but this represents a decline by 10 basis points just in the 2nd quarter.  Generally, this points to a favorable view of warehouses by investors — they’re willing to pay a bit more for each dollar of prospective income.  Conversely, offices in the central business district saw increases of 13 basis points, suggesting a softening of CBD office prospects.

Across various regions of the country, offices in general (both CBD and others) showed either no change or declines in cap rates, with the biggest cap rate declines occurring in Phoenix and Philadelphia.  Only Denver and Atlanta showed increases in office cap rates.

Overall, investors expect cap rates to hold steady or increase over the coming six months.  Indeed, only among CBD offices and power centers was there any sentiment for cap rate decreases.  100% of investors expect net lease properties to show cap rate increases in the coming 6 months, which portends value softening in that property sector.

We’ve used the nasty “R” word (ahem… “recession”) on occasion here at Greenfield, and PwC seems to agree with us.  They expect that the office sector will peak by the end of this year, and a large number of metro areas are expected to move into contraction during 2018 and 2019.  They expect 61% of cities in their survey to show retail property recession by the end of this year, but with some limited exceptions (Austin and Charleston).

Industrial properties, on the other hand, should fare well, with only Houston headed for recession during 2017.  They also expect 15 other markets, including Los Angeles and Atlanta, to face industrial recession by the end of this year.  Further, a large supply of industrial property is expected to come to market during the near term, suggesting an industrial over-supply for the next four years.

One bright spot is multi-family, which continues to “benefit from the unaffordability of single family homes”.  Two markets need to play catch-up (Charlotte and Denver) but other markets should fare well, with 40% of markets headed for expansion.