The NAIOP CRE Sentiment Index

The NAIOP Sentiment Index is designed to predict general conditions in the commercial real estate industry over the next 12 months by asking industry professionals to predict conditions for their own projects and markets. The NAIOP CRE Sentiment Survey is conducted biannually, in March/April and August/September. The survey is sent to roughly 10,000 NAIOP members in the U.S. who are developers, building owners, building managers, brokers, analysts, consultants, lenders and investors in the office, industrial, retail and multifamily sectors. It asks questions about jobs, space markets, construction costs, capital markets and other conditions for real estate development. The questions that comprise the Sentiment Index are not equally weighted. Instead, weighting varies based on whether responses to a question are tightly packed or dispersed. Questions with tightly packed responses (meaning there is more consistency among the answers to that question) are more heavily weighted than those with more dispersed responses (which indicate less consistency).

If every participant in the survey selected the most optimistic answer to every question, the index would be 100. Conversely, if all the participants chose the most pessimistic response to every question, the index would be 0. The survey includes questions that evaluate sentiment about conditions that are not included in the composite sentiment index score but are measured separately on a 100-point scale.

A cross-tabulation of the September survey results by respondent profession revealed only one difference that was statistically significant. Differences that were not statistically significant are not reported in this analysis.

A total of 463 respondents from 326 distinct companies participated in this survey. When individuals were asked what property types they worked on, 75.8% indicated they work on industrial properties, 61.3% work on office properties, 44.9% work on multifamily properties and 39.5% work on retail properties. A regional breakdown shows that 52.9% of respondents are active in the West, 33.0% are active in the South, 29.2% are active in the East and 21.4% are active in the Midwest.