The RCA report tallies worldwide property sales through August, the latest month for which figures are available. Sales of significant commercial properties worldwide totaled $388 billion, a 57% decrease compared to same period in 2007. The pace of transactions plummeted too, plunging 64% from the same period last year, according to the study. Researchers found office sales worldwide were down 65% to $136 billion, second only on a percentage basis to hotel sales, which were down 71% to $26.5 billion.

In addition, RCA suggests it won't get much better through year's end. The report points out September "usually sets the pace of the investment market through year-end." If this September is any indication, researchers say "the property markets are in for some troubling times."

The RCA report traces how what began as a seemingly localized problem relating to companies in the subprime mortgage industry, like now-defunct New Century Financial Corp. of Irvine, CA, has burgeoned into a worldwide credit crunch that "has been impeding deal flow in the US and Europe and is now spreading throughout Asia and erupting into a full-blown financial crisis." Property prices are weakening in most parts of the globe, according to the report. "Early on, investors flocked to Asia, thinking it might be immune to the credit crunch," the team explains. However, the credit crisis has now slowed sales in virtually all markets.

A significant change in recent months, for example, has been the sharp drop in property sales in Asia, which are down 18% year to date. The steepest drop is in Australia, a 74% fall in volume through August, a figure "rivaling that of the US," the RCA study notes. Sales in East Asia, China and Japan are falling quickly although researchers found some portion of the decline in transactions in China results from new regulations that the government implemented earlier this year to slow speculation and land hoarding.

The RCA report underscores some of the unusual, if not unique, ramifications of the disarray in capital markets worldwide, sometimes describing them with catchy headlines like "Buy a Big Bank, Get a Building." Under that headline, the report points out that one of the driving factors in some recent bank takeovers was the opportunity for buyers to acquire premier office buildings as part of the takeover.

"Top-quality real estate assets have now played a central role in the changeovers of two investment banks brought down, in part, by bad real estate debt," RCA's team says. In the case of Lehman Bros. and Bear Stearns, acquiring the two failed companies' headquarters buildings in Manhattan "was a major factor motivating both Barclays and JPMorgan in their respective buyout bids," the RCA report says. In JPMorgan's takeover of Bear Stearns for what RCA calls the "fire-sale" price of less than $250 million, "JPMorgan negotiated to get the Bear Stearns Manhattan headquarters building even if the merger fell apart, RCA notes.

Despite the dour news regarding office sector sales, the RCA's team notes a number of huge office sales have closed throughout the year, including a $2.8-billion sale early this year in Boadilla Del Monte, Spain. In that transaction, Banco Santander sold the 395-acre Santander Financial City office complex with more than four million sf of building space near Madrid to Propinvest, a British real estate investor, for $2.8 billion. The sales agreement included a 40-year lease for the property and an option for Banco Santander to buy it back.