Megadeals Are Hiding a 21% Drop in Real CRE Trading

Key Highlights

• U.S. commercial property sales totaled $107B in August 2026, up 127% year-over-year (MSCI).
• Roughly $70B of that total came from M&A-type transactions, led by the AvalonBay-Equity Residential merger.
• Excluding M&A, single-asset sales fell about 21% year-over-year.
• Multifamily volume rose 402% for the month -- driven by the AvalonBay-Equity Residential combination, not deal-level demand.

The Signal

• Two corporate-level transactions are doing the work of an entire market recovery in the reported data; the underlying property-by-property market weakened.
• Multifamily's 402% jump is a statistical artifact of one merger, not evidence that buyers are back for individual apartment assets.

Implications

Anyone underwriting off 'volume is recovering' headlines should anchor on the single-asset number. For sellers of one-off properties, buyer depth has not returned the way aggregate volume implies -- price discovery remains slow and bid-ask gaps remain real.

When M&A moves more capital than the rest of the market combined, the market isn't recovering -- the megadeals are just getting bigger.