Investment sales activity has been in a "long steady migration" from big cities to small ones, with a greater amount of capital flowing into tertiary markets from primary ones.

In the early 2000s, 60% of all CRE deals were in gateway cities like Los Angeles, New York and Chicago. But by 2004, "the money started to move," says Marcus & Millichap's John Chang. "By 2007, major metros constituted half of the market. It shrunk to 40% by 2018 and primary markets now constitute just 33.8% of total deals.

"Now granted, there's a lot more money coming into real estate today than there was 20 years ago," Chang notes. Specifically, in 2002 there were about 20,000 CRE transactions over $1 million, for a total of about $120 billion in activity. In 2021, there were more than 90,000 such deals, accounting for $734 billion in volume. And while Chang says the total activity in primary markets is still up by more than three times, their share of the total market has shrunk.