Business
Commercial real estate deal volume drops for the first time in nearly two years
A version of this article first appeared in the CNBC Property Play newsletter with Diana Olick. Property Play covers new and evolving opportunities for the real estate investor, from individuals to venture capitalists, private equity funds, family offices, institutional investors and large public companies. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.
The recovery in commercial real estate has been slow and bumpy, much like interest rate policy over the past few years. The two, of course, are deeply connected.
After gaining significant momentum coming out of the pandemic, this year has been rough. October was the first month of negative year-over-year transaction volume growth since the post-Fed rate hike recovery began in early 2024, according to monthly data provided by Moody’s as a media exclusive to CNBC’s Property Play. It tracks the top 50 commercial real estate, or CRE, property sales across the U.S.
Deal volume growth turned positive in the early part of last year and was even approaching pre-Covid levels by year-end.
“More than an imminent downturn in the CRE capital markets, the slip to negative growth in October 2025 reflects the stalemate going on between buyers and sellers,” said Kevin Fagan, head of CRE capital market research at Moody’s. “The bottom of the U-shaped recovery from 2023 low volumes has been lengthened by persistently high interest rates and policy and economic uncertainty of 2025.”
But October was still an active month. There were $24.4 billion of sales, which is roughly 70% of October 2019 sales. Total dollar volume is still higher this year than it was last year, but the momentum of growth has slowed significantly since 2023.
Looking at specific property trends, industrial and multifamily led the top 50 deals. The only sector to improve in deal volume compared with last year was hotel. It saw 6% growth after a negative third quarter.
One notable sale: The New York Edition hotel at 5 Madison Avenue was sold for $231.2 million by the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, a sovereign wealth fund, to the Kam Sang Company, a real estate development firm.
“The New York Edition hotel is an interesting one because of both the sales price being so high, a Mideast sovereign wealth fund pulling out of NYC, and the history of the building,” said Fagan, noting that it was originally an office building called the MetLife Clock Tower and was the tallest building in the world for roughly three years from 1910 to 1913.
Met Life clock tower and pedestrian bridge, Madison Avenue, New York.
Education Images | Universal Images Group | Getty Images
Both the Clock Tower and the Woolworth building, which was also once the tallest in the world, were converted to hotel and residential, respectively, starting around 2013.
“They are nearly worthless as offices, but extremely valuable as a hotel and an apartment building, respectively,” Fagan added.
Meanwhile the multifamily segment saw the biggest pullback in October, down 27% from 2024. It had been showing volumes that were higher than pre-Covid levels in the four months before, and, despite the pullback, buildings were mostly trading at a premium to previous sales.
Office continued its rocky recovery, with either discounts or property conversions as part of the story.
The top October sale was of the Sotheby’s headquarters to Weill Cornell, which probably means a repurposing to health care or medical office, according to Fagan.
New York Life picked up a distressed Manhattan office building from BGO for almost half of its last sale price in 2015.
“It shows there is institutional interest in offices sold at discounts, reinforcing the long-term value floor for office buildings in good markets, and the recognized enduring utility of such properties,” Fagan said.
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“Amazon to date has invested USD 40 billion in India since 2010. Now we will invest another USD 35 billion by 2030 across all our businesses in India,” Agarwal said.
Amazon To Invest USD 35 Bn In India By 2030 With Focus On AI-Driven Digitalisation
E-commerce giant Amazon is set to invest a mega-investment of USD 35 billion, over Rs 3.14 lakh crore, in India by 2030 across its businesses with a focus on AI-driven digitisation, export growth and job creation, a senior company official said on Wednesday.
Senior VP Emerging Markets, Amit Agarwal, made the announcement during the Amazon Smbhav Summit, saying the company has set a target to quadruple exports from India to USD 80 billion from about USD 20 billion.
“Amazon to date has invested USD 40 billion in India since 2010. Now we will invest another USD 35 billion by 2030 across all our businesses in India,” Agarwal said.
Amazon’s investment plan is two times of Microsoft’s investment plan of USD 17.5 billion and close to 2.3 times that of Google’s USD 15 billion investment plan by 2030.
With this investment, Amazon will become the largest foreign investor in India, according to a Keystone report compiled from publicly available data.
In May 2023, Amazon announced plans to invest USD 12.7 billion in India by 2030 into its local cloud and AI infrastructure across Telangana and Maharashtra. The company has already invested USD 3.7 billion in India between 2016 and 2022.
The company has invested at scale towards building physical and digital infrastructure, including fulfilment centres, transportation networks, data centres, digital payments infrastructure and technology development.
According to the Keystone report, Amazon has digitized over 12 million small businesses and enabled USD 20 billion in cumulative ecommerce exports, while supporting approximately 2.8 million direct, indirect, induced and seasonal jobs across industries in India in 2024.
(With inputs from agencies)
Click here to add News18 as your preferred news source on Google. December 10, 2025, 10:58 IST
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Stock market today: Nifty50 opens above 25,850; BSE Sensex up over 100 points – The Times of India
Stock market today: Nifty50 and BSE Sensex, the Indian equity benchmark indices, opened in green on Wednesday. While Nifty50 was above 25,850, BSE Sensex was up over 100 points. At 9:17 AM, Nifty50 was trading at 25,865.25, up 26 points or 0.099%. BSE Sensex was at 84,804.28, up 138 points.Dr. VK Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist, Geojit Investments Limited says, “As the year slowly draws to a close the market structure is becoming challenging. Heavy selling in the broader market is justified since valuations have been elevated and kept high only on the strength of liquidity. This is unsustainable. But the weakness in the overall market and sustained selling by FIIs are a bit disappointing. A major concern is the excessive delay in the finalisation of the US-India trade deal. A remark by President Trump yesterday that action should be taken on India for dumping rice in the US hurt sentiments further.”“Fundamentals are turning in favour of India. Higher growth and corporate earnings are achievable in the quarters ahead. The fiscal and monetary stimulus provided this year have started producing results. The excessively low inflation rate, which impacted nominal GDP growth, also will start rising in the coming quarters. This is significant since corporate earnings growth will be influenced more by nominal GDP growth rather than by real GDP growth. The fact that valuations in the large cap segment have become fair is another positive. These positive factors will start weighing on the market soon. Investors have to keep faith and wait patiently for the fundamentals to play out.”The S&P 500 declined on Tuesday as investors anticipated hawkish Federal Reserve messaging despite potential rate cuts. JPMorgan contributed significantly to the benchmark index’s decline following the bank’s announcement of substantial 2026 expenses.Asian markets showed modest gains following Wall Street’s subdued session, with investors awaiting the Federal Reserve’s final interest rate decision of the year.Foreign portfolio investors recorded net sales of Rs 3,760 crore on Tuesday, whilst domestic institutional investors showed net purchases of Rs 6,225 crore.(Disclaimer: Recommendations and views on the stock market, other asset classes or personal finance management tips given by experts are their own. These opinions do not represent the views of The Times of India)
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