Commercial real estate prices - as measured by Moody's/REAL Commercial Property Price Indices (CPPI) - continued to decline in August, but at a slower pace than in preceding months. The CPPI was down by 3% from July after that month saw a 5.1% drop from June.

Moody's md Nick Levidy says: "Although prices have declined steadily over the past year, the rate of decline has slowed in recent months after falling by about 8% in both April and May."

Moody's/REAL CPPI is now 32.8% below its level from a year earlier and 40.6% below its peak measured in October 2007.

At 377 sales, the overall volume of transactions in August continued to be low, the rating agency notes. The number of sales, however, was a pick-up from July, which had slightly more than 300 sales.