On the office front, Cassidy Turley says Metro DC's supply pipeline of new buildings will continue to "remain thin" compared to the historical 20-year average of 7.3 million square feet. In turn, office sales have seen a flurry of activity. By year-end, the Washington, DC area closed more than $7.4 billion worth of office investment sales transactions in 2011, according to CBRE.

"That's a 60% increase over 2010 sales," says CBRE EVP Bill Kaye. He notes that the final total includes some very large transactions, including Monday Properties' portfolio recapitalization by Goldman Sachs for $1.2 billion and the $615-million Market Square transaction, a 679,710-square-foot complex at 701 and 801 Pennsylvania Ave. that traded for $904 per square foot in March 2011.

Kaye says 2012 will remain a strong sales year, although clearly at the start of the year it's impossible to predict what the total will be by December. However, he expects that "core assets will continue to perform well," thanks to continued low interest rates fueling aggressive pricing. CBRE says it doesn't expect to see much of a change in pricing over 2011 levels for core plus opportunities, though it predicts that price per square foot against replacement cost will become a significant factor in the valuation of suburban office assets.

Farther north, the City of Brotherly Love is also experiencing positive growth. According to the Central Philadelphia Development Corp., total job growth across the city rose by more than 1% from October 2010 to October 2011, the highest year-over-year growth Philadelphia has experienced since March 2009.

One of the bright spots is the leisure and hospitality industry, with an all-time high of 63,700 new jobs. As of October, hotel occupancy in the CBD was 80.1%, a 4.4% increase from September, and a 75-basis-point rise over October 2010. Downtown RevPAR, at $137.63, was $50 higher than in the broader region. At year's end, Center City experienced an 11.4% increase in RevPAR, more than any of its peer regions in Boston, Baltimore, New York City and Washington, DC, according to the CPDC.

Even farther north, the Greater Boston office market experienced a strong final quarter of 2011 and Richards Barry Joyce & Partners' vice president of research, Brendan Carroll, is optimistic that 2012 will see similar gains. In Q4, company analysts found that absorption in the sector reached 861,000 square feet, making it the highest quarterly take-up since the third quarter of 2007. Additionally, Q4 vacancy dropped 0.4% to 15.4%.

"Both Google and Microsoft are committed to expanding their Cambridge presence in a major way over the next couple of years," Carroll says. "We also know that in Cambridge itself, Biogen Idec is going to move to a 495,000-square-foot headquarters. These demanddrivers for the most part are going to affect the urban core and Boston and Cambridge occupancy over the next couple of years."

Office and retail space users alike are drawn to Boston's identity as a "knowledge-driven market in an increasingly knowledge-driven economy," says Carroll. And there are some big names interested in the region, running the gamut from Google to locally based Akamai and others like the out-of-market Pfizer. According to Carroll, it seems that 2012 will not only bring reasons for these and other companies to stay, but hopefully for more firms to come to the area. He points out that the 1.6 million square feet of office product that is under way is already 100% pre-leased.

"After being challenged in 2008 and 2009, the Greater Boston market enjoyed a very strong 2011 from a demand perspective and a resurgence in new construction," he explains. "It will be interesting to see if the demand sustains itself through 2012."