The good and bad news, said Chandan, is that buoyed by a flood of capital, this year will be “the biggest for CRE ever.” The stats back that up. The value of US commercial real estate transactions in the first half of 2015 jumped 36% from a year earlier to $225.1 billion, ahead of the pace set in 2006, according to Real Capital Analytics.

However, moderate economic growth, an improving labor market and marginally higher interest rates imply more-limited appreciation rates on the horizon. Most markets are saturated by capital, and with this in mind it is “obvious we have problems emerging,” Chandan said. “In this competitive market, we are all price takers. If you are not happy with underwriting standards, you can take a deal or leave it, but in this climate, the tendency is to take it. “

Again, he said, in this overheated market, it is critical for lenders and investors to remain disciplined and have the ability to say no to a deal. This is no easy feat—it's a borrower's market, with capital cheap for all, exerting pressure on the valuation of the asset. Additionally, consumers have not been this confidant since before the crisis, which also does not bode well for commercial real estate.

According to Chandan, cheap money has done for the US what the economy could not, fueling an insatiable appetite for risk and undue risk taking. “Last year, we had moved far enough away from the crisis that we began to take additional risks. As a result, lending standards are not what they once were. We are planting the seeds for a downturn.”

The CRE market in this country would not exist without access to debt, Chandan said. But the hunger for yield has gone on for so long that underwriting standards are deteriorating. “There is more lending in more places to more borrowers—benefitting construction, secondary markets and non-core, non-stable properties—with lenders giving ground on underwriting as competitive overlaps increase. Growth in available debt is outpacing growth in risk-equivalent borrower pools. We have short-term memories in CRE. The longer we go, the greater our belief that momentum will continue.”

Interest rates will go up soon, said Smith. “We will never have negative interest rates in the US, but the wait for a rise in interest rates has been the longest drum roll in history.”

According to Chandan, it's tough to have a meaningful conversation about rates. “Low interest rates are now simply taken for granted.”

In the early stages of the recovery, Chandan said, prevailing monetary policy helped bolster the economy—it was an appropriate response to crisis conditions and their immediate aftermath. However, “we are still in the mode of crisis intervention, but we don't have crisis conditions.” As a result, low yields on the risk-free investment have coincided increasingly with an appetite for risk with the effect of pushing asset prices higher.

US monetary policy has significant consequences, said Chandan, which is why there is so much timidity on the part of the Federal Reserve. The Fed, however, has held off so long, “a rise in rates has been turned into a momentous event when it shouldn't be.”

With interest rates so low, he said, “our quiver of tools is empty. We simply don't have the useful tools at our disposal in the event of another downturn.”

Both Chandan and Smith agree another recession is imminent. Smith is somewhat optimistic, predicting the next recession will not transpire until 2021. Not surprisingly, Chandan believes the next recession will occur well before that time. “We can foresee a period of significant economic stress—a recession—at some point during the next three or four years. We are making all the right decisions today to ensure something will go wrong.”

If the current cycle resembled the average, Chandan said, the US would already be in the early throes of the next recession. “We are 6.5 years into recovery, and the average economic expansion lasts five to 5.5 years. If this expansion were average it would be long over—lagging job=market trends notwithstanding—since no US expansion has lasted more than 10 years.”

The tepid economic recovery can be attributed several factors, including stagnant wages. “As labor markets tighten, wages should be rising, but they are not. In fact, wage growth is weaker now than it was during the recession. There are more jobs in the US—5.8 million—than ever, but there are a mismatch in terms of skill sets and an inability to adapt as needs of employers change.”

The big questions, he said, continue to lie in the economy, housing, fundamentals, capital and regulation. Will the rental bias continue in the housing market? How much capital is too much? How will the industry adapt to changing regulations?

Whatever the outcomes may be, one thing is certain. Historywill repeat itself. One conference panelist aptly summed up the current state of the CRE market—and the economy overall—in a quote from the late baseball great Yogi Berra, who passed away last month, “It's like déjà vu all over again.”