Moody's commercial property index nudges higher

In another sign that the commercial property market may have bottomed out, the Moody's/REAL Commercial Property Price Index showed a 1% gain in November. The broad measure of commercial prices had been trending down, losing 44% over the two years from its peak in October 2007. The index measures most commercial property transactions worth $2,5 million or more, said professor David Geltner, director of research at the MIT Center for Real Estate. The bump up in values is "certainly not a bad sign, but it's hardly definitive" of a market bottom, Mr. Geltner said. Distressed sales fell in November from October, he said, which may indicate that sellers are keeping troubled properties off the market. If that distressed-sales number had gone up instead, that would be a positive sign that "people are paying up" for distressed properties, Mr. Geltner said. As reported earlier, a narrower measure of high-quality properties owned by pension funds, the Transactions-Based Index of Institutional Commercial Property, was up 4.4% in the third quarter.