Developing Commercial Real Estate Indicators – state of play and way forward After the International Conference on Real Estate Statistics from 20-22 February 2019 in Luxembourg

Residential Real Estate Statistics is a well-developed domain of official statistics already enshrined in a legal act in 2013. As a consequence, recent and legacy data are available for all EU Member States.Statistics in Commercial Real Estate are less developed for several reasons. One decisive reason is the heterogeneity of CRE asking for clear definitions of the element „commercial“ and the split in subcategories before starting to develop any price indices. The statistical working paper https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/7870049/8545612/KS-FT-16-001-EN-N.pdf/9e4bbc9b-8c6f-44a9-b686-1083a7a8fa0f developed internationally and published by Eurostat end 2017 supports efforts for compiling data.A high number of methodological questions were dealt within the International Conference www.real-estate-statistics.eu. In its sixth session, a wide spectrum of topics in particular related to Commercial Real Estate was discussed. A summary of the conference findings might be useful to present in order to enrich the discussion for further developing this new statistical domain.In many Member States private data providers play a key role or are the only data provider due to missing official statistics even. The methodology of private data providers differs in various countries and the methods applied are not always made public. However, the macro prudential analysis of the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) and the ECB request data comparable not only over time but also across Member States. The ESRB expressed its data needs for monitoring the macro prudential stance of Member States in its recommendation on closing Real Estate data gaps encompassing both Residential and Commercial Real Estate data.The ECB is working on the indicators shedding light in the financial sphere of Commercial Real Estate. The AnaCredit project with its first data transmissions of some countries since autumn 2018 plays a key role. The ESS is complementing the picture by paving the way to the collection of information for physical indicators. This includes pilot projects targeting the development of price, rent and yield related indicators. Another work stream of the ESS targets the collection of data on construction starts and completions of Commercial Real Estate projects.