MIAMI-The CREFC January Conference concluded Wednesday with a look at the buying environment in 2012 and a closing general session that featured Rep. Edward Royce’s (R-CA) dim view of the regulatory environment.

Harris Trifon, global head of CRE Debt Research at Deutsche Bank Securities, moderated the “Who’s Buying?” panel, which explored 2012 projections for valuations of property and capital flowing into the market.

“Just to put a little context around who bought in the previous year, volumes were up in the US about 30% to 40%, nearly approaching $200 billion,” Trifon said. “Interestingly, though, about 50% of the transactions by market value were concentrated in only four markets, ones we’ve all heard a lot about—Manhattan, Boston, Washington, DC and Chicago.”

New York was the top destination for capital in 2011, while Washington, DC ranked number seven.

“Europe, the sovereign crisis and the implications of all that have led to some volatility in the financial markets that have impacted every asset class, CMBS probably being one of the hardest hit,” he said. With negative downsides given the austerity measures that might take place in Europe, Trifon then asked panelists to weigh in on how this might affect their buying decisions and overall portfolio strategies.

Peter DiCorpo, president of the US Managed Accounts Group at CBRE Global Investors, said that the austerity measures will dampen things a bit but that real estate remained a good buy.

“When you go back in the history of real estate,” Dave Reilly, CEO of Cornerstone Real Estate Advisors said, “real estate was not considered one of the asset classes. Today it’s the third leg of the stool—stocks, bonds and real estate.”

With interest rates low, the returns generated by real estate were another positive in the panelists’ views. “When rates are as low as they are, the returns on real estate are that much greater so I think that’s one of the reasons we’re seeing so much activity,” DiCorpo said, adding that rates and activity are pushing yields down.

With its constrained supply, the outlook was good for 2012 for New York City, where DiCorpo said that “without a whole lot of supply, it will push rents up.”

Talk then turned to the situation in Europe, where debt crises and an increase in European loan sales could potentially dampen activity in the US. “We as a firm actually acquired about $2 billion of real estate in Europe in 2011—that’s about half of what we did in terms of the entire globe—the rest of it was in the US,” DiCorpo said, adding that there are interesting prices to be had on relatively distressed assets.

Breaking out the asset classes, Dave Fazekas, managing director for the Eastern Region at Industrial Income Trust, said that “office and industrial have a little bit of opportunity. If you look at the fundamentals of supply and demand in multifamily,” he continued, “we’re starting to see occupancy rates in multifamily at the 95% to 95% rate.”

Arndt Nicklisch, director of acquisitions at Colony Realty Partners, said that it follows a diversified strategy. “We always want to make some investments in office, some in industrial and some in apartments,” he said. “Within that, though, we see a lot of opportunity on the office side, particularly the non-trophy type product.”

Following the panel, Rep. Edward Royce (R-CA) spoke at the closing general session. Royce, who has been critical of the millions of dollars in bonuses given to executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, was equally critical of the regulatory environment in Washington.

“The question is, are the actions that we’re taking in Congress, particularly with Dodd-Frank, going to be so injurious as to be an anchor around the neck of the economy?”

The risk retention provision particularly drew his ire. “Our long term goal should be repeal of the risk retention provision,” he said. He added that this would likely take a new election in the Senate. “I believe that would be the effect if [Harry] Reid [D-NV] is no longer the leader of the Senate. I believe that is exactly what we would do in the House and the Senate.”