Since 2000, Shell and his team have closed more than $4 billion of transactions in North America, encompassing single-tenant property sales, sale-leasebacks, bond leases, synthetic leases and other structured debt and equity products for corporate clients. Those clients have included such household names as Discovery Communications, Mazda, Procter & Gamble and Thomson Corp. He also has represented developers and institutional owners in selling or financing single-tenant buildings leased to such tenants as Aon Corp., Bosch-Siemens, General Electric, MetLife and Walgreens.

With traditional sources of corporate finance tight in today's environment, Shell tells GlobeSt.com that "corporate America is looking at sale-leasebacks, or some form of asset monetization, much more closely as a way to offset" the capital disruption. Particularly for corporations with A or lower credits, he adds, there is more liquidity available for their real estate and "although cap rates have risen, in many cases they have not risen as high as the cost of corporate borrowing."

At least for as long as companies don't have access to other forms of affordable capital, sale-leaseback activity will be on the rise, predicts Shell. "We see interest, and serious interest," he says.