Commercial Property Executive
By Barbra Murray

RCLCO has released its Year-End 2019 Sentiment Survey and the results suggest that commercial real estate's yearslong positive run will continue in 2020. The prediction and other assessments come from a geographically diverse group of experienced real estate professionals with expertise spanning the industry.

Providing the big picture, RCLCO's Current Real Estate Market Sentiment Index went on the upswing, rising from 37.5 at year-end 2018 to 64.9 at year-end 2019. The increase in optimism is due in no small part to desirable stock market conditions and robust underlying real estate fundamentals. And while respondents anticipate that real estate market conditions will decline just a bit over the next 12 months, they believe a downturn is not as close at hand as previously anticipated. Approximately 77 percent of survey participants expect the recession to transpire in 2021 or later, a remarkable increase from year-end 2018, when only 20 percent expected the recession to hit in 2021 or beyond. A notable 37 percent of year-end 2019 participants don't expect the downturn to occur until 2022 or even later. Read more.