Every so often, one of those tidy little market sayings gets repeated often enough that it starts to sound like settled science. “Public REITs typically lead private commercial real estate valuations by six to 12 months” is one of them. It is a useful shorthand, but it is still a shorthand. And for institutional investors, shorthand can be dangerous if it is mistaken for a law of nature.
The core intuition is directionally right. Public REITs trade continuously. They absorb information quickly. Private commercial real estate, by contrast, is valued through appraisals, periodic transaction evidence and professional judgment. That process is slower, less transparent and more prone to smoothing. So yes, public markets often move first, and private markets often catch up later. But the i
