The global financial crisis, followed by a global portfolio shift towards commercial real estate, has reinforced the demand for timely, consistent and transparent valuation metrics and transactions data. Current initiatives at global, country and market level are addressing shortcomings in this area; nevertheless commercial real estate markets pose unique data collection and presentation challenges. While users of these data should be aware of the difficulties and qualifications inherent in the collection and compilation process, enforcing uniformity of processes and definitions across markets and sub-sectors may come at a cost. Propositions that more data are always better than less and that market transparency is always better than opacity are fruitful topics for debate in the context of commercial real estate markets.