NEW YORK CITY-Despite growing confidence and improving fundamentals in the commercial real estate sector, access to capital and uncertainty of government policy remain the chief concerns of senior-level executives in the industry. A survey of 150 respondents following Akerman Senterfitt’s third annual US Real Estate Summit found revealed that while 82% expressed greater confidence in the market – an increase of 6% from last year – the recent recovery is still tenuous.

“People are more comfortable year-over-year,” Rich Bezold, chair of Akerman’s national real estate practice group, tells GlobeSt.com. “That is a good sign, but when you’ve got global economic uncertainty, I think everybody has their eye on what’s going on in Europe and in other parts of the world. This being an election year, there probably won’t be a whole lot that happens, with concerns that 2012 will be a little stale until people have certainty one way or another.”

According to survey results exclusively released to GlobeSt.com, respondents cite the policies of the current administration (38%) and global economic uncertainty (30%) as the reasons for a lack of confidence in the industry’s outlook for 2012. But almost half of the participants (44%) cite the availability of credit as the most pressing issue facing the real estate industry right now, though down 10% from 2011.