Source: The Wall Street Journal —
Investors purchased a record amount of commercial real estate in the third quarter, defying warnings that the Covid-19 pandemic would erode these property values and starve the industry of cash.
Instead, purchases of apartment buildings, life-science labs and industrial properties, which serve as e-commerce distribution centers, rocketed commercial sales to more than $193 billion in the quarter. That is up 19% compared with the same three months in 2019, before the pandemic, and the biggest quarter for commercial property sales ever, according to data firm Real Capital Analytics.