"The last two downturns were very much related to the commercial markets getting out of balance. Each time, it took four or five years to work through," Eisen says, adding that these earlier cycles correlated with business expansions and contractions. This time, however, it is different. "The last business expansion was the result of easy credit," he says, "and the fallout is a pandemic--it is across every piece of the financial community. It includes every facet of real estate, having started in residential and made its way through office, industrial, retail and multifamily. The failure of our whole financial structure globally makes this the granddaddy."

According to Eisen, when the industry rebounds, things will have changed. "We are going back to basics and we can expect to see a huge de-leveraging of our society. Moving forward, if you want to buy a piece of property, you will have to use some capital," he says.

In the early 1990s, there was aggressive construction of spec buildings stemming from tax law changes and optimism in the future. "When the crash came, the RTC dealt with property that failed," Eisen says. He adds that we may see some kind of similar governmental setup created to deal with the now toxic assets that so many financial institutions hold today--nationally and globally.