"It's probably best to say we have been in an eight to nine year expansion of the economy," says John B. Levy, the study's co-author. "The economy has been on the mend since last great depression for real estate [in the late 1980s]. Costs have been coming down. We are at an incredibly new low level of nine basis points, basically down 96% from the peak."

"We had [in the 1980s] an incredible expansion of new buildings," Levy reports. "In fact, new buildings were built without a lot of funds or tenants. When the economy slowed down, we had all these buildings built on speculation. A lot went back to lenders because the developers couldn't pay them. We had default and delinquent loans. We've been kind of working off that since the peak in 1993. Now we're in a level that is about as good as it gets."

Levy attributes some of the lows to conservative lending practices. Multifamily delinquencies remain pretty steady at three basis points while offices and retail fluctuates a bit. Although Levy says he's hesitant to predict the future.