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Last year the U.S. commercial real estate market continued its trend of rising investment sales, marking double-digit growth in terms of transaction volume and number of deals.
The year kicked off with uncertainty amid geopolitical factors and the imposition of tariffs. But the back end of the year saw borrowing costs fall, helping investors regain confidence to deploy dry powder they had been sitting on.
There were some 30,400 investment sales across the country last year totaling $472.6 billion, a nearly 20 percent surge in dollar volume and 18 percent increase in transactions compared to 2024, according to a market report from brokerage firm Avison Young, which expects the growth to continue into 2026.
The multifamily sector remained the primary volume driver, but the market also experienced strong growth in the retail and development sectors, which helped the market to go beyond industry expectations.
The bulk of commercial deals in the U.S. happened in top-12 markets. Dallas-Fort Worth, which continues to pull corporations and, therefore, employees, was No. 1, with $22.3 billion in sales last year, up 6.6 percent year over year. Every property type except for industrial, posted gains in that market as investor confidence returned.
The San Francisco/Bay Area followed, with $20.5 billion worth of sales. Then came Los Angeles ($18.9 billion), New York ($18.8 billion) and Phoenix ($14 billion).
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Private buyers, which typically can more easily snap up assets than bigger institutions, were the primary engine of the U.S. market, accounting for more than 60 percent of dollar volume in half of the top-12 markets analyzed by Avison Young. Their share of deals was highest in Chicago, accounting for 65.4 percent of dollar volume in 2025. Miami (64.4 percent) and Los Angeles (62.1 percent) followed.
Meanwhile, institutional buyers were most active in Dallas-Fort Worth, where they made up well over a third of dollar volume.
As for international buyers, they continued to flock to New York — the top destination for foreign capital in 2025 and traditionally considered a safe bet. Cross-border investors accounted for 14.1 percent of the Big Apple’s commercial real estate deal volume, often double or triple the shares of most other markets. Miami recorded the second-highest share of international buyers, 9 percent.