Garfield calls industrial the "bread and butter" of the investment world, a reliable product that is always needed and less subject to fluctuations in demand. "Where there have been huge run-ups in prices and lowered cap rates on other asset types, industrial has not moved that much, so it's not going to fall off that much," he says.

Cary Krier, senior vice president in the Dallas office of Jones Lang LaSalle, agrees with Garfield's assessment, but he emphasizes this doesn't mean the credit crisis has had no impact at all. "The assumptions we're building into models today are very different from a year ago," he says. "Everything has to cash flow now. You can't get by on expectations of large rent increases. You have to show income from the start."

Yet even that isn't 100% true, says John F. Pantone, senior vice president in the Chicago office of Buchanan Street Properties, which is close to sewing up $66.6 million in bridge financing for the acquisition of a vacant 770,000-sf historic warehouse property in Washington, DC. The loan is coming through even though the site will have to be redeveloped before it can be leased out and start generating revenue. On the other hand, the Newport Beach, CA-based company had to provide $32.8 million of equity, or nearly a third of the purchase price, to assure financing.