Fall has arrived and with it comes a series of industry functions where many people in commercial real estate finance come together to kick around a few ideas and share view points about their corners of the industry. I was recently at events for CRE Finance Council and the Real Estate Roundtable and I’m off to attend the Urban Land Institute fall meeting. I wanted to share with you some of my observations on what I’m hearing.

At CREFC

- our mess, our CRE capital markets are the unintended consequences of the larger macroeconomic issues across the globe. its the economic world in Europe and our national economy that is where the real problem is and commercial real estate finance is being affected by it. That said, securitization is off the rails again and needs permanent capital investors to "be willing to invest in the middle of the capital stack".

- Volatility will be in the business for years to come, but opportunities abound as well. Unemployment is 4% for the college grads, and 16% for the those less educationally fortunate.. The Government is shrinking, private sector is adding jobs. Growth in economy and spending is slight but is positive.

At RER

The discussions were all about the Government. The Government is broken. It gets nothing done and has become seemingly powerless. Three great ideas:

 - President Obama announces he will not seek re-election and will work tirelessly to fix the nation for the next President and not be distracted with fundraising and politicking. This would never happen but it would be a really cool leadership play.

 - Term Limits: It is no wonder the government gets nothing done – our elected officials are never around together working on anything. They are out fundraising and politicking. Give them all one 6 year term. This too won't happen.

 - The stuff dreams are made of. Make the USA a nation of renters. Let’s bag the view that the American dream is to borrow Government debt to leverage yourself to buy a home as an investment.

 - European Debt Crisis: Alan Binder spoke and he is worried. A friend of mine at BlackRock says this is not an issue. They will move the banks to the government and get on with it.

 -  Interest rates will stay low. That's for sure.

 - Transaction volume will be low – similar to what the industry saw in 1999 and won’t return to the levels of 2006 for some time yet.

 - My business partners believe we will be in a double-dip recession by March 2012 and that there is another 3 years of pain and slow growth out there.

I don’t know about you, but I'm tired. I'm tired of the volatility and how hard it is to make a business vibrant and to earn a return on investment. But, it's what we do. And I DO love the people.

By Jack M. Cohen, CRI, CMB - Chief Executive Officer
November 10, 2011