As commercial realty transactions start to pick up across the globe, now is the time to invest in that sector, Colin Dyer, Jones Lang LaSalle CEO, told CNBC on Friday.
“What’s happened in the last 12-18 months in various cities around the world, it started in Hong Kong and London and Shanghai, and now it’s moving gradually to the U.S. is that transaction volumes are picking up, price discovery are a little clearer, and prices have bounced back off of that floor as transaction volumes have grown.”
Transaction volumes in U.S. commercial realty already have been picking over the last six months, said Dyer, doubling last year’s levels.
“Large gateway cities like New York, Washington, the West Coast cities, we’re seeing prices picking up quite sharply- not quite to the levels that we saw in 2008, but coming off the bottom quite rapidly.”
Meanwhile, commercial realty prices in both Asia and Europe are also rebounding, he said. Asian cities, in particular, have driven values in London, which was the first mature Western market to see such growth in the commercial realty sector, he said.
“That was driven by a very low level on the pound, the fact that the London market has always been traditionally very liquid,” he said. “And there had been a tremendously rapid price correction, down about 50 percent from the peaks.”