A new Green Street report by managing director Daniel Ismail and analyst Harsh Hemnani digs into commercial real estate transactions of $5 million or more. As a "critical metric of CRE health and overall liquidity," the deal activity is bad news, only $37 billion, down a "stunning" 70% year over year, based on the analysis of information in the firm's sales comp database.

This is more than a comparison between a slowed period and a previous historical record. Q1 saw a figure lower than the 10-year average transaction pace. If quadrupled for an annualized result, the $148 billion would be lower than every other year since at least 2013.

Even worse, the plummet isn't something explained away with a simple, "Oh, you know, office" comment for the sector down 79%. As the report noted, this drop included those darlings of pandemic performance, multifamily (dropped 83%) and industrial (off 69%) that once shown so brightly. Strip centers had a deal loss of 59%, with healthcare (-42%), malls (-27%), and lodging (-26%) following behind. The only sector that saw any gain was net least: up 2%.