One of the most important keys to successful leasing in today’s market, Jennings said, is market knowledge. “Know your asset,” he said. “You also have to understand your tenant’s requirements, sell your asset’s attributes and create synergies for your property.”

Other important factors, he said, are working on tenant relationships. “Don’t just broker the deal and be done with it. It is important to partner with the tenants and owner. Be an adviser with the owner to make sure the expectations are realistic.” He added that time kills deals and encouraged people to “have a sense of urgency.” Another key, he pointed out, is to cross sell and “think about creating leases you can use in multiple places to get to the finish line faster.”

Bryan Cunningham, an associate director of retail advisers at C&W’s San Diego office, told GlobeSt.com that, “Restructuring a deal is still better than taking it to market as a new deal.” Michael Garner, regional director of Vestar Property Management, said it is important to “be creative in how you are thinking today.” He elaborated by pointing out that if a landlord provides rent relief to a tenant, the tenant needs to not just sit on it, but instead, needs to invest the money back into their business to pump sales back up.

Opening speaker, Richard Hollowell, managing director at BBK, said “I am not going to sugar coat it,” saying that the market “will bump along the bottom for a very long time.” Although the room was trying to push for the “sixth inning” in the baseball analogy, Hollowell said that after speaking with experts in the industry, his opinion is that we are in the “third inning.” He pointed out that there hasn’t been a market series of mark-to-market events to start to clear these assets from the banks. The CMBS special servicers who are working on the troubled loans that are securitized are now taking a bit of an extend-and-pretend stance, he said. “We are kind of stuck in the mud,” he said, predicting that it will continue.

Looking at the economy, Hollowell said that “The average American is up to their eyeballs in debt. It will take until 2016 for the average American to get their debt in order.” He also pointed out that the huge fiscal problems both on the state and local levels aren’t going to go away. He spoke briefly on the European debt problem still looming and the residential foreclosure problem still continuing at a high level, as evidence of the expected “bumping along the bottom for a while.”

John Combs, principal of River Rock Real Estate Group, who also provided an introductory speech, pointed out that there is some confusion out there with some special servicers that don’t know what they are doing with assets and don’t know if those assets are even for sale. Meanwhile, he said, “You have people who want to transact with an asset, but they can’t because the servicer doesn’t know what they can do with it.”