Capital markets & leasing are very cyclical. Largely depends on your time horizon.

Qualitatively, the last cycle was characterized by easy liquidity and over supply in CRE markets, followed by a liquidity crisis and banking shock. Currently, supply has been much more well behaved (people still remember the last crisis) and banks are far more resilient / less over extended. In any asset class heavily reliant on financing (eg RE), financing markets staying open will be an important determinant of whether transactions occur or not.

interesting visual from the company’s November IR presentation. It shows the trough and peak of these metrics over the last 16 years. management thinks that based on the yield curve, reit valuations, supply, cap rate spreads, that we still have a ways to go before hitting peak. Most of the impact from higher rates has been offset by tighter spreads, and spreads are around their historical midpoint. I wouldn’t necessarily correlate cbre’s fee revs with industry commercial real estate investment transactions because a lot of cbre’s business comes from owner occupied transactions. Also, CBRE is taking market share in leasing around the world and can roll up smaller competitors in times of trouble, which should provide some cushion relative to industry level growth trends. Balance sheet is solid, with less than a turn of lev.