"2008 has been a tough year," Collins said Tuesday at a press briefing here sponsored by the four Colliers entities that merged into a new holding company in August. "2009 will be tougher." Sales prices in the New York area will decline anywhere from 25% in the city to 40% in the suburbs before all is said and done.

Speaking at a similar briefing his firm sponsored on Wednesday, Bach said vacancy across the commercial sectors will peak in early 2010, about the same time that rents reach their trough. Volume in the New York City metro investment sales market, which Real Capital Analytics says had already declined 64% across the asset classes for the first three quarters of '08, will improve in '09--but that will be due to a flood of distressed properties hitting the market.

Despite the steep drop-off in sales volume, both Collins and Glen Esnard, president of Grubb & Ellis' capital markets division, noted that average asset prices have not yet declined appreciably. One reason is that many of the properties that have moved in '08 have been trophy assets on the order of the Macklowe Properties portfolio. It will take the sales climate of the next year or two, when owners may no longer have the option of selling only class A properties, to show where pricing actually is, Esnard said.