"The level of tenant activity has been decreasing since first quarter, which has resulted in one of the slowest years of net absorption that our market has ever seen," says Patrick Feeney Jr., a senior vice president at CB Richard Ellis specializing in industrial properties. "I think we'll end this year at 1.5 million square feet of absorption. Our typical year's activity, on a blended average, easily runs about 6.5 to seven million square feet of absorption."

Feeney

Retail, if anything, fared even worse, says Rick Murphy, also a senior vice president at CBRE. "We've seen a dramatic drop in rents across the board, from power centers to strip centers," he tells GlobeSt.com. "Where guys were getting $35 per square foot, now they're getting $25 per square foot. That's if you can even get the tenants, and there's not a lot of them running around."