You don’t have to be an economist or a statistician to see that there are a lot of apartment buildings on the market right now. Pick up tomorrow’s Globe and look in the income property section and there are more buildings listed there than I have seen in 6 years, at the same and sales are slowing. When I’m talking about apartment buildings I’m talking about 9+ unit multifamilies.

The first quarter of 2007 saw 20 9+ unit apartment buildings trade at an average of $2,523,045. The first quarter of 2008 only saw 5 properties sell at an average of $1,657,031. The total dollar volume of deals Q1 2007 was $50,460,911 while it was only $8,285,154.

There are a lot of experts predicting that we won’t see any significant slip in commercial prices this year but with a wave of property coming to market and not a lot moving it seems unlikely to me that prices won’t give. They’ll have to or else would-be sellers will have to withdraw from the market if buyers and sellers aren’t aligned on value.

It’s not that there aren’t any buyers out there I’m working with a number of investors myself who are shopping in this market right now and I know other brokers who are as well. For the most part though they’re sick of looking at 6 and 7 caps on old properties with deferred maintenance and the promise of a “great condo conversion”. At the same time sellers are looking at the price they could have had just 12 or 18 months ago and its hard for them to reconcile in their own heads that those prices are gone and not coming back for a while.