2010 Transaction Activity

By Doug Marshall, CCIM

Tanya Williamson in my office went through the laborious task of tabulating all of the transaction activity for the past five years.  Below is the criteria she used in compiling the data:

• Source - CoStar Group database
• Investment sales activity only, no owner occupied
• Property types included Office, Flex, Industrial, Retail, Mixed-Use and Multi-Family
• Transactions with a sales price of $1,000,000 or greater
• Arms length transactions only
• Properties were located along the I-5 corridor from Kelso, WA to Eugene, OR including Bend, OR

Based on this criteria, the annual transaction activity for the last 5 years is shown below:

As you can see, transaction activity for 2010 was slightly less than 2009, a decline of about 9% over the prior year.  Substantially more dramatic is the 65% decline in the number of transactions since the 2007 peak.  The good news is that it appears that we have leveled off and maybe we will actually see an increase in sales activity this year. 

As you can see from the graph below, multi-family properties closely followed by retail properties make up the bulk of the sales in 2010.  Combined these property types total 67% of all sales transactions last year.

The last tidbit we can glean from the data is the transaction broker representation.

Of the 153 sales transactions in 2010:

• 54% had both the buyer & seller represented by a real estate broker
• 27% had no buyer's broker
• 17% had no brokers involved for either the buyer or the seller
• 2% had no listing broker

That's the news from Lake Woebegone!  Let's hope that the market has bottomed out and 2011 will see a substantial increase in sales activity.