2020 was a record-breaking year for housing markets in many countries- including the US, but for the commercial real estate sector, it was a completely different story. Lockdown and containment measures severely affected economic activity, pushing down commercial property transactions and prices in cities around the world. A new analytical chapter in the IMF Global Financial Stability Report looks at how continued downward pressure on prices could threaten financial stability and hamper the recovery. In this podcast, lead author Andrea Deghi and team lead Mahvash Qureshi say vacancy rates of office space in the US almost doubled in 2020 due to people having to work from home, a trend likely to continue well beyond the pandemic.

Read the analytical chapter: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/GFSR/Issues/2021/04/06/global-financial-stability-report-april-2021

Read the blog: https://blogs.imf.org/