I did a search to get an idea of how the Commercial Real Estate market is trending, as this site focuses exclusively on Commercial Real Estate. I also wanted to see if there was an explanation as to why activity was slowing down and to see if there were signs it was picking up. This trend chart explains the activity level, and needs little commentary. The search term was "commercial real estate". This trend is for the United States only. Note the bottom line, which is "News reference volume", where we see spikes in years 2008 - 2009.
Compare the USA trend to Illinois. Note, here I searched for "state real estate", inserting a state's name. Illinois is shown below. Wisconsin did not have enough data points to show any trend.
A similar trend is shown between the charts. Note that if we follow these trends, all commercial real estate professionals should take the end of the year off, or find other productive activities, as the volume always bottoms out at year end.
My guess is that we are going to be stuck in this environment for a while. A trend like this will take some time to reverse itself, or a significant event, like employment spiking up dramatically. My advice is to keep marketing and at the same time keep your expenses level low. My hope is that this is going to be slow and hopefully steady rise up, but prepare for a rough and bumpy ride.
Here are some other charts that may be of interest, which show similar trends:
Search Term: "warehouse"
Search Term: "commercial lease"
Links: http://www.wisconsinbrokernet.com
http://www.illinoisbrokernet.com
http://www.pointonecommercial.com
