For Commercial Real Estate, Hard Times Have Just Begun

As the commercial real estate market heated up earlier in the decade and lenders competed feverishly to issue ever-riskier mortgages, hundreds of bankers, investors, lawyers, brokers, appraisers, accountants and analysts flocked to an investors’ conference in Florida each January to celebrate their good fortune with lavish beach parties featuring bikini-clad models and popular entertainers.

But in what a Prudential Real Estate Investors report described as “a move of near-perfect symbolism,” the conference sponsor, the Commercial Mortgage Securities Association, recently announced that next year’s event would be relocated from South Beach to Washington, where the industry has been lobbying strenuously for federal assistance.