The Moody’s/REAL Commercial Property Price Index surged 4.1 percent in December from November, the largest monthly increase on record for U.S. commercial property values, Bloomberg reported.

And though the number commercial property transactions also jumped more than 75 percent in December from the previous month – coinciding with a second consecutive monthly increase in values – it’s too early to pinpoint a pattern.

“Two months of positive returns and one month of higher transaction volume does not allow us to discern a trend just yet,” Moody’s said this week in a report, “particularly in light of the fact that year-end commercial real estate activity can distort the true condition of the markets.”

December was the first month in 2009 to see positive year-over-year growth by dollar volume – just less than 5 percent – with 716 transactions totaling $9 billion.

“It would be naïve and aggressive to say that we’ve seen the worst,” said Neal Elkin, president of Real Estate Analytics LLC, a New York-based real estate research firm, especially considering that property sales in December typically climb as a result of buyers and sellers closing end-of-year deals.

Commercial property values fell to a seven-year low in October, are down 29 percent from a year ago and have dropped 41 percent from their peak in October 2007.