"Our phones are ringing again," said Millerd, recounting how the market cratered along with the remaining real estate sales sector once the debt crisis took hold in mid-summer. The biggest challenge, the C&W senior director relayed to the audience at Boston's Westin Waterfront Hotel, is in getting obdurate owners to accept adjusted pricing required from more expensive financing and disconcerting economic storm clouds, such as a record decline in consumer confidence during the past five months.

"The market is starved for quality assets," said Millerd, whose underlying theme to prospective sellers attending the C&W-sponsored program was "Don't' Miss the Bus in 2008." While acceding that the peak has passed. Millerd stressed that buyers are still ready to pay close to historic figures for malls and shopping centers in New England. One reason, Mulvee explained, is that the region has not been overrun by new construction as seen in other parts of the country such as Florida, Las Vegas and Southern California, ironically an area battered by employment losses from the mortgage sector morass. "Huge amounts of supply are being added," Mulvee relayed in her overview of the US economy and its impact on the retail arena.

The fresh inventory will bump national vacancy rates up by 1.5% in 2008 after a similar gain in 2007, Mulvee reported, and the senior economist warned that retailers related to the housing market are on shaky ground, with sales of building supplies down sharply. "Retail numbers are not that great," Mulvee said, making rent accretion difficult, particularly since increased occupancy costs of 7% are already squeezing profit margins. The US economy bears watching as well, said Mulvee, calling the January job results "ugly," and noting that the unemployment rate has crept up slightly during the past year to 4.9%. As a result, she says, investors will be less inclined to stray into tertiary markets, or will mandate strong returns if they follow such a path. "You are actually going to get a risk premium again," she said.