CRE Executives Face Conflicting Price Signals Across Major Indexes

So which one is "right"? In practice, both. The split has more to do with what each index is measuring than with any fundamental disagreement about the market.

What's Under The Hood Of RCA CPPI And CCRSI

Both RCA CPPI and CCRSI rely on repeat‑sales methodology, tracking properties that have sold more than once to estimate price movements over time. From there, though, they take different paths. RCA CPPI is a transaction‑based price index benchmarked to December 2006, with "All Types" blending sectors and markets into a single national series. It is designed to give investors a clean, comparable view of how broad property categories have moved over the long run.

CCRSI, by contrast, is built around two main series: a value‑weighted index that leans heavily on high‑value trades in major markets, and an equal‑weighted index that gives more influence to the sheer number of smaller deals typical in secondary and tertiary areas.

That structure makes CCRSI more sensitive to the monthly mix of deals — what's actually trading, at what ticket sizes, and in which markets — than an index that is smoothing across all sectors and geographies.

This is where the conflicting price signals start to make sense. RCA CPPI can show gentle appreciation nationally if enough sectors and markets are nudging higher, even as CCRSI registers a down month because the deals that did close — especially big‑ticket office or other challenged segments — cleared at lower prices.

Neither view is wrong; they are simply answering different questions. RCA CPPI is asking, "Where are values headed in aggregate?" CCRSI is asking, "At what prices are current deals actually getting done?"

Why Office Skews So Much Of The Picture

Office sits at the heart of these mixed messages. CoStar describes May as a "speed bump" for the broader recovery, with office buildings posting the steepest declines and largely absent from the list of biggest price gainers.

Larger, investment‑grade transactions weakened for the second straight month, and this time smaller deals softened too, stripping away what had been a source of support for overall pricing.

Elevated interest rates are compounding the problem, keeping borrowing costs high relative to recent years and widening the gap between buyer and seller expectations. That spread, more than anything else, slows deal flow and drags on CCRSI.

MSCI's RCA CPPI, looking at office through a national lens, sees something a bit different. Suburban office prices led all major property types in May, up 4.6% year over year and 0.7% month over month — an advance that implies an annualized pace near 9.3%.

CBD office prices posted their tenth straight month of positive annual growth, up 1.4% year over year and 0.1% month over month, but still sit roughly 50% below their March 2022 peak. From that vantage point, office looks like a battered sector slowly crawling off the mat, with suburban assets in particular showing life.

At the property level, CoStar's examples remind you how brutal the repricing can be. A vacant Houston tower at 3000 Post Oak was foreclosed on in May at $10.5 million, about $159.5 million below its 2014 purchase price, after its main tenant left and the 19‑story building went dark. That deal is one of only 25 distressed repeat sales in May — just 1.9% of the 1,355 recorded — and only eight investment‑grade properties, or 3.9% of that subset, were distressed. The percentages are small, but the hit to value in those cases is enormous.

Put together, RCA CPPI and CCRSI are telling the same directional story on office: pricing is still under serious pressure, recovery is highly uneven, and distress, while not yet widespread, can be severe when it surfaces. The difference is that one index looks at the broader trajectory of office values, while the other captures the immediate pain embedded in individual trades.

Turning Conflicting Signals Into Strategy

For capital allocation and risk management, the job isn't to decide which index you "trust" and ignore the other. It's about using them together — and understanding how each aligns with your portfolio and investment style.

RCA CPPI's 1.6% annual uptick and 0.4% monthly gain say that, nationally, commercial property prices are edging higher, with suburban office and industrial providing some support even as apartments and retail show more softness.

CCRSI's dual index decline tells you that the actual deals crossing the finish line in May, across both high‑value and general commercial segments, did so at slightly lower prices, with office weakness and fewer top‑dollar trades pulling down the averages.

In practical terms, if you're a core, institutional investor focused on major metros, CCRSI's value‑weighted series may be closer to what you're feeling in the market, especially around office and other challenged segments.

If you're looking at a diversified, multi‑sector portfolio or benchmarking performance over longer cycles, RCA CPPI's national and sector‑level indexes may be more useful for framing where you sit versus the broader universe. The important move is to match the index to your exposure, not to treat any one series as a universal truth.

The bottom line for CRE executives is that conflicting price signals aren't a bug; they're a feature of a market that is both structurally shifting and cycling. RCA CPPI and CCRSI are complementary tools rather than competing narratives. Used together, they can give you a more realistic picture of where values are trending, what prices are actually clearing, and where you should be leaning in — or pulling back — as you make capital allocation and risk decisions in the remainder of 2026.