Headquartered at Chicago's Aon Center, NCREIF says cap rate compression continued across the board during Q3.

CHICAGO—Investment performance across 7,371 institutionally-owned commercial properties continued to soften in the third quarter, the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries said Wednesday. Returns for the three months that ended Sept. 30 represented the weakest Q3 results since 2010, according to NCREIF.

The quarterly total return as measured in the NCREIF Property Index was 1.77% for Q3, including a 1.16% income return and 0.60% total appreciation. That's down from 2.03% last quarter and 3.09% a year ago.

NCREIF notes that while trending down over the past six years, the quarterly income return has been fairly consistent during 2016. It was 1.19% in Q2, for example. Appreciation, conversely, has been on a steeper downward trajectory thus far this year, with Q3's capital return representing less than one-third the rate that was recorded in the year-ago period. Conversely, appreciation in 2015 reached its highest level since 2007.