Thanks in part to a huge surge in transactions in Dallas-Fort Worth, the overall U.S. investment sales market was up more than 25% in terms of dollar value during the first half of the year.
Transaction volume also rose more than 15% over last year to nearly 12,500 sales, according to Avison Young’s first-half U.S. investment sales report, shared first with Bisnow.
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However, the $182.4B sales total for the first six months is on pace to decrease 1% from last year when annualized. Sales volume is also trending toward a nearly 7% drop compared to 2024.
Based on historical performance, Avison Young Head of U.S. Investment Sales James Nelson said he doesn’t expect things to play out that way.
“Traditionally, the second half of the years are usually really strong, so we have no doubt that it'll pick up,” Nelson told Bisnow.
Transactions and volume each rose from the first quarter to the second, jumping 49% and 47%, respectively. Avison Young Senior Director of U.S. Investment Sales Erik Edeen attributed that to Q1 sluggishness due to a hangover effect from the uncertainty around last year's presidential election.
More deals started being made during Q1 and were reflected in the stronger second-quarter volume, he said.
DFW led the country with $13.5B in sales, an 89% rise over the first half of 2024 and nearly 57% more than the second-highest total, San Francisco’s $8.6B. The Metroplex also saw a nearly 681% surge in sales of development sites by volume, despite a 7.5% drop in count, which signals pricing is picking up.
Multifamily deals in DFW topped $6.3B across 153 transactions during the first half, increases of nearly 140% on volume and almost 90% on count.
“There's just a lot of multifamily [deals] getting done in Dallas,” Nelson said.
New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., all posted significant gains, with the office sector leading the way in each of those metros.
“It's impossible to paint the office market with one brush,” Nelson said.
A quarter of all office sales in New York since the pandemic have gone to end users, which is a trend across the country, Nelson said. The three largest office deals during the first half were all in California, and they were all bought by occupiers.
“You're not buying an office building if you don't have long-term belief in the office market and your long-term office needs,” Nelson said.
Multifamily shows signs of stabilization in high-growth markets as deliveries are expected to reach an all-time high in 2025. But Avison Young projects that will drop off by more than 50% next year. The most likely factors contributing to that decrease are the increased cost to build, uncertainties over tariffs and concerns with oversupply in some markets, Nelson said.
The drop in new supply will help drive up demand for existing projects. And markets like Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco all have multifamily vacancy rates in the range of 5% or less.
Private buyers continued to dominate transactions across the country. Institutional investors started to reemerge in metros such as DFW and D.C., and they represented the biggest chunk of buyers in the Denver market during the first half of the year, at more than 41%.
