The morning sessions kicked off with keynoter Leo Wells, president of Wells Real Estate Funds, who provided what amounted to a pep talk in down times. "Fear is the number-one problem," he told the audience. "Company executives talk about growing their companies but are in fact fearful to grow. They are fearful of their people."

He cited statistics that underscore the fact that the main fear for the majority of US CEOs is employee confrontation. That means that most leaders are fearful of "telling their people if they are doing a lousy job," he said. "As a result, you've got two or three people doing the job of one."

He advocated for a fearless corporate plan--one that incorporates a complete examination of "your people, your company and yourself," and he made the promise that this self-examination will show results in the corporate P&L.

But rousing as it was, it wasn't a message embraced by the lending side of the equation, and in the following Town Hall Meeting, Douglas Neal, managing director of Banc of America Securities, admitted that in his neck of the woods, "being fearless often gets you carried off the field on your shield."

Indeed it is a sluggish market and one that still needs to tell its story better. "The challenge is to get CEOs to think of net leases as long-term financing," said Gordon DuGan, co-CEO and president of W.P. Carey. "We can do this by thinking of ourselves as a finance industry, rather than a real estate industry." He concluded with the belief that the industry has to do a lot more to educate clients on the benefits of synthetics and other net-lease vehicles.

More to come on the conference.