After having been beaten upside down over the last three years, the commercial real estate industry is getting up off the mat. Signs of stabilization are occurring across most property types as demand drives absorption. The real laggard is the office sector, which is suffering because of tepid job growth and dynamic structural changes.

Meanwhile, transaction volume throughout the industry is ramping up as the pricing gap between buyers and sellers narrows and investors start to deploy the billions of dollars in equity they’ve been amassing. Dare we say it? There is giddiness over the growth prospects for the commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) market. Domestic issuance is expected to rise from $11.6 billion in 2010 to possibly $50 billion this year.

Against that backdrop, NREI hosted a roundtable discussion with six leading finance professionals at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s annual convention in San Diego in early February. The topics ranged from the choppiness of the economic recovery to distressed real estate to lessons learned from the financial crisis.

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