Figures can fluctuate from month to month and it is therefore more useful to look at data that covers longer periods of time. Thus some 523 purchase and sale agreements were notarised in the first half of this year, compared to 1,805 in the same period in 2006.  This means that commercial property trade in the first half of this year was only 29% of what it was in 2006.

The recession has hit the commercial property market in the greater Reykjavik area a lot harder than in rural areas. Thus the number of notarised commercial property purchase and sale agreements in the greater Reykjavik area in the first half of the year was only 23% of what it was in  2007, compared to 39% in rural areas. The boom in this market was also far greater in the capital area than it was in rural areas.

Is this the bottom?
Now that there are widespread indications that the trough of the economic downturn has been reached, it is interesting to note that the number of notarised commercial property purchase and sale agreements was the same in June as it was in the same month last year, i.e. 68. Nevertheless, there has been a contraction in recent months and there were therefore about 18% less contracts of this kind notarised in the first half of the year than there were in the same period last year. There has been a 27% contraction in this market between the first half of 2008 and 2009. The contraction therefore seems to have slowed down, although it is too soon to say whether the bottom of the recession in the commercial property market has been reached yet.


CDS spreads stable