NEW YORK CITY—Private investment activity across commercial real estate was up in 2014, while public companies pulled back, generating 6% less dollar volume than they did in 2013, Real Capital Analytics says in its latest US Capital Trends report. That being said, RCA says the first month of 2015 saw private investors pulling back compared to their share of investment sales for the prior year, while the REITs were out in force.

During '14, private buyers amassed just under $190 billion in commercial property acquisitions of $2.5 million or greater, about 46% of the total US dollar volume of $423.9 billion for the year. This investor class increased its dollar volume by 29% year over year. Equity funds produced a similar result on a Y-O-Y basis, increasing dollar volume by 24% to approximately $48.6 billion, according to RCA.

However, a closer look at the numbers reveals a slightly more complex story. Regarding the market-share growth by private investors and pullback by public ones, RCA's USCT report says that “the picture is not universal across sectors and the full year.” Public investors actually saw gains in market share for officer, retail and hotel properties, although the gains were generally small. Conversely, RCA says, “Gains in the apartment and industrial sectors by private investors were quite large, so on a net basis the composition of buyers tended to favor the private investors.”

As for equity funds, RCA reports that they're now facing competition for investor dollars not only from other such funds but also from institutions. “In the past, the institutional segment was more focused on safe-stable core investments and these managers would raise capital in fund structures from pension funds and sovereign wealth investors,” according to the USCT report. Now, however, equity funds are raising capital from many of the same capital sources. “For many smaller investment managers, it has been difficult to play in this market where the likes of Blackstone and Starwood Capital have been so successful.”

Accordingly, RCA says, “there are simply fewer of these groups that are active today. A survey conducted by Preqin Real Estate Online showed that in '14, only 109 new closed-end private real estate funds focused on North America came to market.” That represents a substantial drop-off from the previous year, when 162 North American funds came to market, exceeding the previous high watermark of 158 established in 2007.

The pullback by private investors and bullishness of public ones in January illustrates RCA's point on how buyer composition has fluctuated over the past five years. “In some periods, the shifts in the groups dominating acquisition activity have been more pronounced than others,” according to RCA. “What is far more pronounced is the change in the number of active buyers in the market at any one time.”

Put simply, last year there were simply more of them. “Looking across all investors active in the US over the last ten years, we found that there were 18,574 unique buyers in the US in '14,” RCA says. That's more than three times as many buyers who were active during 2009, the depths of the Great Financial Crisis.