"You've got to have some transparency about the P&L of what's going on here" in executing a corporate real estate strategy, said Alan Scott, managing director and Americas regional head of corporate real estate services for Deutsche Bank. Scott and other panelists cited cost pressures on corporate real estate functions—one of the reasons companies are outsourcing some functions to begin with.

David Arena, president of Grubb & Ellis New York and himself a former corporate real estate insider, commented that "the outsourcing business is as hot as can be. In firms like ours, outsourcing is actually making up for the deceleration in transactions."

As corporations look increasingly toward outside providers, they're also raising their expectations. Arena said "the history of companies looking for things for free" from outside providers was "long and continuing." Scott noted that the ante has been upped in terms of the sophistication of managing an account.