Two annual surveys of global real estate secondary market activity — from Landmark Partners covering global markets and from CBRE covering that firm’s secondary trades — have highlighted the increasing interest of investors in secondaries, or the buying and selling of units in real estate funds.

The Landmark survey, the firm’s 21st, tracked 99 closed or under-contract real estate secondary transactions last year, the largest number of individual transactions recorded in a single year. This was some 8 percent higher than the number of transactions logged in 2015. Aggregate net asset value at the time of sale totalled approximately $5.01 billion (€4.76 billion).

Although the total number of transactions increased, the aggregate dollar volume of NAV traded declined in 2016, due primarily to the absence of mega portfolio transactions (more than $1 billion), which contributed significantly to 2015’s record $8.2 billion (€7.79 billion) total real estate seconda