The flip side of that lender forbearance has been a dearth of buying opportunities, despite investors' best efforts to build a war chest. O'Brien notes that amid a gradual process of price discovery, "there still hasn't been enough transaction volume to say where the prices are." Nor has the mounting tally of distressed assets brought many properties to market.

"One of the interesting things we've seen is that the process for taking over an asset, for the borrower to hand it back to the lender, has really taken a long time to develop," says O'Brien. "In part, it's because the lender doesn't want the asset back and gives the borrower a lot of latitude." He adds that the "increased professionalism" of real estate managers today, compared to the downturn of the 1990s, helps build a level of trust between lenders and borrowers.

"But even in situations where the borrower just wants to get rid of the asset, we've seen lenders in effect slowing that process down," O'Brien says. "So a lot of assets that you would've thought would have gone back early last year are just going back now." He adds that Deloitte anticipates "more distressed activity in 2010 and a lot more in 2011."

For now, though, lenders confronted with distressed assets may be biding their time. "If you go back to the days of the RTC, you had properties and loans selling for pennies on the dollar," O'Brien says. "The investors who bought them generally did very well. The players today don't want to repeat that mistake. They don't want to be the ones selling at the bottom." Particularly as economic indicators begin looking up somewhat, "there may be value in holding these properties and loans to recapture some of the value over time."