It’s getting ever-so-slightly more competitive to bid for commercial real estate assets — particularly multifamily and office properties — abroad.
JLL’s Global Bid Intensity Index, which analyzes the commercial real estate firm’s bid data, rose in July compared to the month before. It’s the index’s first month-over-month growth since December.
However, the index is still down from July 2024, when the real estate industry had expected the Federal Reserve to cut its benchmark federal funds rate. The index softened at the start of 2025 because of volatile bond markets and continued trade policy uncertainty.
Living sector assets, including multifamily properties, have the most competitive bidding dynamics compared to office, retail and industrial properties.
The July reading for multihousing properties ticked up by 0.1 percentage point from April.
Many major markets continue to have affordability and housing crises, triggering increased demand for multifamily properties. There also is a near-record level of capital ready to be deployed into these assets, according to JLL.
Office properties are the least competitive overall among those four asset classes. Many office markets in the U.S. continue to struggle with dropping prices and Covid-era work-from-home allowances, and developers are working to convert many offices into residential properties. However, office competitiveness grew the most in July from April, by about 2.3 percent, among the property groups tracked by JLL’s index.
Meanwhile, the competitiveness of industrial and retail assets fell during this time, in part because of continued trade uncertainty.
However, retail’s competitiveness is higher than it was in the summer of 2024, thanks to stronger fundamentals and steady consumer spending, per JLL.
Looking ahead, the world continues to watch American trade policies with caution. In February, 49 percent of real estate experts said they expected market conditions to improve over the next six months. Three months later, in May, 38 percent of experts felt this way.
Thirty-seven percent of experts surveyed said they expected conditions to worsen, up from 28 percent.
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