What is a building worth? For investors in commercial real estate, the answer to this question is foundational to their ability to understand and benchmark their investment portfolios. Appraising the value of an asset is always a combination of art and science, but in the current environment it has become more challenging, and more fraught.

It is conventional wisdom that values are down — how could they not be, with the higher yields required in the current high-interest-rate environment? — but understanding the extent of any decline with precision and clarity becomes difficult in the absence of an active transaction market. That has made the current investing environment difficult, and frustrating.

“For sure, I think that there’s frustration,” says Robby Tandjung, global head of business advisory services with Altus Group. Tandjung adds that, in many cases, the frustration comes from comparisons to public-market pricing.

Altus handles valuation manage