An index report Monday showed U.S. commercial real estate prices overall rose for the fourth month in a row.
Moody's Investors Service's national aggregate index for all property types increased 2.4% in August from the previous month.
The rating agency largely attributed to the increase in overall prices to a 5.9% decline in the percentage of distressed transactions from July.
Distressed transactions represented 21.7% of the repeat sales the index measures in August. Repeat-sale transaction volume in general remained higher than average during the month. Prices for distressed transactions dropped 3.5% during the period.
Tad Philipp, Moody's director of commercial research, said in the report that while distressed sales may be near their high-water mark he does not expect a significant increase in CRE prices near-term due to the slowdown in originations stemming from wider securitized commercial mortgage spreads.
Events like the fiscal troubles in Greece have caused the spread widening in the commercial mortgage-backed securities market, Philipp said in a recent interview.
