The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta announces the release of the U.S. Commercial Real Estate (CRE) Momentum Index which combines economic and real estate market data for more than 300 metro areas to provide insight into the momentum of change in CRE markets across the country.
A new interactive market analysis tool will enable users to track the CRE Momentum Index over time to identify CRE trends and assess market risks for the four major property sectors—apartment, office, retail, and industrial—as well as view the underlying variables that affect the index's movement. One of the intended uses of the tool is to help small and medium-sized banks more quickly identify and accurately gauge risk as they are actively engaged in commercial real estate lending.
The CRE Momentum Index combines publicly available economic data such as employment, e-commerce, retail sales and others, with third-party, market-specific data such as occupancy trends and construction forecasts. The tool also provides a running quarter-to-date analysis as data are released in order to improve tracking in between quarterly data releases.
"Exploring both economic and commercial real estate dynamics in tandem helps users understand the movements in commercial real estate markets, and it is particularly helpful to look at these dynamics by property type," said Lauren Terschan, senior data analytics and real estate specialist in the Atlanta Fed's Supervision, Regulation, and Credit division, who helped develop the tool. "By looking at changes in overall market momentum, this tool will help users track market undulations and help identify potential risks."
According to NAIOP Research Foundation, commercial real estate contributed more than $1.1 trillion to the U.S. GDP and supported nine million American jobs in 2019.
"Commercial real estate is a hugely important sector to the overall economy and contributes significantly to job creation, investment and lending," said Brian Bailey, CRE subject matter expert in the Atlanta Fed's Supervision, Regulation and Credit division, who developed the index's methodology. "It is critical that industry participants, lenders and regulators have an excellent understanding of economic drivers and risks, and we believe the CRE Momentum Index will help with that understanding."
The CRE Momentum Index is available in the Data and Tools section of the Atlanta Fed website.