There's an old Russian saying: the marvel of a dancing bear is not how well it dances but that it dances at all. In the case of office properties, the marvel is not how much values have fallen, but that they haven't plunged down a deeper well.

Dylan Burzinski at Green Street in a recent analysis noted that the firm clocked Class-A office values as being down by 35% since pre-Covid highs, the equivalent of a "mid-7% nominal cap rate across the sector for REIT-quality office portfolios." That's notable in part because the average property type was roughly flat from the before times. Other types? According to Green Street, B-Class properties are "down much more." And that isn't even C.

Thus, the 35% figure could be pure misdirection. With transaction volumes being far off from normal, there is next to no price discovery and open debate over how far office values have fallen and the distance left to plunge.