Sule Aygoren Carranza is managing editor of Real Estate Forum.

NEW YORK CITY-Despite all the talk of a slowdown, apartment sales volume closed out 2007 with a bang--that is, on the surface, at least. A look deeper into year-end data from Real Capital Analytics Inc. proves that investors did indeed hold off on making purchases as the capital markets tightened up.

By the numbers, $36.4 billion in deals closed during the fourth quarter brought the year's total volume to a record $98.6 billion--an 8% increase over 2006. However, a bulk of that Q4 number is attributed to the $22-billion purchase of Archstone-Smith by Tishman Speyer Properties, Lehman Brothers and Bank of America, which closed in October.Taking that privatization out of the equation, fourth-quarter deal volume actually declined 60% over the same period in 2006. Further, total 2007 sales would be nowhere near that of the prior two years.

Broken down, some 837,000 units in slightly more than 4,000 communities changed hands last year (in deals worth $5 million or more). By those figures, investment activity actually fell by 10% last year, as did the number of transactions. Of the deals that closed, 250 were portfolios and 2,600 involved individual assets.