NEW YORK CITY-As the economic recovery continues, a select group of markets--all the usual suspects--is keeping commercial real estate attractive for investors, according to a new report from Deloitte, Real Capital Analytics and the Real Estate Research Corp.

“Expectations & Market Realities in Real Estate 2011: Balancing Risk and Return in An Era of Uncertainty,” charts what risk investors are willing to take, and where. This was the first year that all three groups pooled their resources to create the report, according to Matthew Kimmel, principal and US real estate services leader for Deloitte Financial Advisory Services. A spokeswoman for RERC confirms that the first edition of the report was issued in 2004.

Not surprisingly, multifamily has proven to be the most enticing, particularly for risk-averse investors. “The multifamily or apartment property market really does provide the greatest amount of upside at the moment and there are several reasons for that,” Kimmel tells GlobeSt.com. Those reasons, Kimmel says, include a record low of new product entering the marketplace in addition to sluggish job growth. “The underwriting standards by the lenders has caused those people who could enter the single family housing market before to not be able to do so now,” he says. “So now their alternative is to turn toward multifamily and apartments.”

Due to the aforementioned sluggish job market, the secondary and tertiary office markets are at the other end of the spectrum, the report finds. “Because of flight to quality and the focus on coastal major markets some of these property types might be at greater risk,” Kimmel says, and the one that we believe has the most risk attacked to it is office properties.”

According to the report, office properties closed the fourth quarter of 2010 with sales just over $18 billion, as sales volumes climbed quarter over quarter. The climb reflected a focus on those primary markets that Kimmel mentions. “Office investors clearly preferred well-tenanted properties in just a handful of major markets,” the report reads, noting areas like New York, Boston and DC. “Nonetheless, volume increased for stabilized assets across a broad geography, with volume climbing year-over-year in the vast majority of the top 40 markets nationwide.”

As for the outlook going forward, Kimmel tells GlobeSt.com that he’s most curious about how the tremendous amount of debt coming due will be dealt with. “Is there going to be continued distress through the maturity cycle of these debt instruments through the next five years because of the high amount of volume of maturities that are coming due and the fact that a portion of the debt is upside down in terms of the value of the collateral?” he wonders. “The big question that has yet to be answered is how that gets dealt with.”