Image courtesy Wikipedia user Wyn Van Devanter

The U.S. General Services Administration has selected the Trump Organization as its preferred team to handle a $200 million redevelopment of the Old Post Office building and annex in Washington’s Federal Triangle neighborhood, the GSA announced Tuesday. Under the Trump Organization’s proposal, the Old Post Office will, perhaps unsurprisingly, be converted into a luxury hotel with more than 250 rooms, upscale restaurants, a spa and conference facilities, while still preserving the building’s Romanesque Revival architecture.

Under the RFP, GSA and the Trump Organization will spend the next year negotiating a detailed redevelopment agreement that will specify usage, historic-preservation requirements and the federal government’s revenue stream. In the meantime, GSA will relocate the building’s current federal tenants, which include the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities.

If negotiations proceed as expected, redevelopment is expected to start in 2014, with occupancy in 2016. At the end of the lease, control of the building will revert to the federal government.

Built between 1892 and 1899, the Old Post Office was already considered old-fashioned when it opened. The D.C. Mail Depot was moved to a larger building in 1914, and in the 1920s the Old Post Office faced demolition.

A lack of money during the Great Depression kept the building open, but in 1964 a federal commission recommended taking the building down. Though demolition permits were issued, historic preservationists fought for the building. In 1973 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places, and an extensive renovation began in 1976.

A generation later, the building had outlived its usefulness as federal office space, and Congress directed GSA in 2008 to enter into a long-term lease under Section 111 of the National Historic Preservation Act, thereby guaranteeing the restoration and retention of all of the building’s historic features, while allowing the private sector to determine how to develop it to its fullest potential.

Although redeveloping historic properties is often perceived as a niche activity, GSA is currently involved in several such projects.

One is in Grand Junction, Colo., where in February 2011 the agency announced plans to turn the 92-year-old Wayne Aspinall Federal Building and Courthouse into the nation’s first net-zero energy usage building on the National Register of Historic Places.

If the redevelopment meets its goals, the building will in the course of a year produce as much energy as it consumes. The project is also aiming for LEED Platinum certification. GSA will install a geothermal heating/cooling system that uses the warmth or cold of the ground to help control temperature. A solar panel array is projected to generate enough energy to balance out the building’s electrical demand.

After the project is completed in January 2013, nine federal agencies will take space in the Aspinall Building.

A vastly bigger GSA historic-redevelopment project is getting under way in D.C.’s southeast quadrant, where a former mental hospital overlooks the Potomac and Anacostia rivers.

The creation of the Department of Homeland Security was the largest restructuring of the federal government since the creation of the Defense Department. Similarly, the $3.4 billion St. Elizabeths project, which will be DHS’ new home, is the largest federal construction project in metro Washington since the Pentagon was built during World War II. St. Elizabeths was established by Congress in 1855 as a government hospital. Currently, the 118-acre east campus is owned by the D.C. government, and the 182-acre west campus is owned by the federal government.

Ground was broken in September 2009 on the new 1.2 million-square-foot headquarters of the U.S. Coast Guard, which is scheduled for completion in 2013. The $450 million building is being funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Most of the St. Elizabeths project, however, will involve adaptive reuse. GSA will preserve 51 of the 62 buildings on the west campus, while incorporating many sustainable elements. For example, about 80 percent of the roof area on the new buildings will be green. GSA’s goal is to achieve LEED Gold certification.

Image courtesy Flickr user WordRidden

The federal government, various state attorneys general and the largest banks in the country have struck a deal that would specify an assortment of mild punishments for the banks’ involvement in robo-signing. A formal announcement on the deal might come as early as Thursday, according to published reports on Wednesday, with some of the larger (and more foreclosure-ridden) states such as California and Florida probably joining the settlement.

All together, the banks in question — Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., and Ally Financial Inc. — would be obliged to pony up about $25 billion for homeowner relief, provided California and Florida in fact decide to join (less if not). Some $17 billion of the total would be for loan modifications for delinquent borrowers; about $3 billion would be for refinancing for homeowners who are current on their payments but under water; and around $1.5 billion would be for direct payments of up to $2,000 each to borrowers who lost their homes through foreclosure. A remainder of about $2.5 billion would be for states, to fund housing programs.

The settlement will likely not affect the banks one iota, at least in terms of their bottom lines. Between the five, $25 billion isn’t a vast sum, but more importantly, most of the settlement costs would be expressed as accounting entries reflecting the lowered loan values for those borrowers fortunately enough to receive modifications. The markdowns have probably already been counted as expenses by the banks.

The bigger question is whether the settlement will affect the housing market. An estimated million homeowners will see their mortgage debt reduced, while another 300,000 will be able to refinance after previously being unable to. As many as 750,000 will receive the better-than-nothing $2,000 payment. Since this is an election year, the Obama administration hopes that the deal will have some positive impact on the market, but considering the government’s record in intervening in the mortgage market since the Panic of 2008, any positive for the broader mortgage market is no sure thing.

Still No Greek Deal

There was still no clarity from Europe on Wednesday. Depending on the source, the deal is ready to go, nearly there or on the verge of a breakthrough — or suffering from a roadblock or a snag or a bump in the road. A few deadlines have come and gone. Meetings have been held, postponed and rescheduled.

Greece might yet be able to forestall an immediate default, but the longer-term prognosis for the country remains dire. The nation’s economy shrank by 6 percent in 2011, and unemployment officially is 18.4 percent, and unofficially much higher (the crunch is so bad that many employers can’t pay their workers regularly). According to the Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research, which does for Europe what the Conference Board does in the United States to gauge consumer confidence, fully 64 percent of the Greeks believe that the economy will get even worse in 2012.

Wall Street was gloomy at the beginning of the day on Wednesday, but recovered enough to be slightly positive by the end of the day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up a Lilliputian 5.75 points, or 0.04 percent, while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq gained 0.22 percent and 0.41 percent, respectively.

BioMed Realty Trust Inc.’s presence in the Boston/Cambridge life sciences market will soon surpass 3 million square feet, now that the life sciences real estate REIT has entered into an agreement to purchase the 287,000-square-foot Cambridge Place in Cambridge, Mass. The property comes with a price tag of $119 million.

“The Cambridge life science market is what we think is the preeminent market in the world really,” Rick Howe, director of corporate communications with BioMed, told Commercial Property Executive. “There are a large number of life science companies and organizations that are looking for space — some office, some lab — and we want to be able to handle both types of users’ requirements in the market.”

Cambridge Place consists of three structures and is presently 80 percent occupied. Heading up the tenant roster are Idenix Pharmaceuticals Inc. and engineering and construction firm CDM Smith Inc., which has called the property home since the complex’s first building, One Cambridge Place, opened its doors in 1998.

The life sciences market in the Boston/Cambridge area is booming, so prospects for leasing up the remaining space at Cambridge Place and other industry-related office and laboratory properties are positive.

“The demand is strong,” Angus G. McQuilken, vice president for communications with the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, told CPE. “Massachusetts continued to lead the nation in biotech-related construction in 2011 and that’s a trend we expect to accelerate in 2012.”

The U.S. is home to some of the world’s leading life-sciences clusters. New York/New Jersey, the San Francisco Bay Area and San Diego are among them, but Boston leads the pack, as per statistics from commercial real estate services firm Jones Lang LaSalle. And industry experts believe the Boston/Cambridge area will continue to lure life sciences businesses for the foreseeable future.

There are a few big reasons why the area is such a draw for life sciences companies ranging from large global corporations down to small entities and startups. “Companies are locating here and expanding here because they want proximity to our world-class academic institutions, our R&D, and they want proximity to partners in the industry and you’ll find all of the major global players in life sciences here in the Massachusetts cluster,” McQuilken said. “Also, they’re looking for talent. The talented workforce is the number one reason why companies choose to locate here. Then there’s the government role. Massachusetts’ 10-year, $1 billion life sciences initiative continues to be a magnet for private investment.”

Alas, the call for life sciences office and laboratory space accommodations is only going to grow louder. The average occupancy level at these properties is in the 13 percent range, according to a recent report by Richards Barry Joyce & Partners, but numbers can be deceiving. “One of the top biotech real estate concerns going into 2012 is the lack of tenant choice in the market and resulting constrained growth,” Brendan Carroll, senior vice president of research for Richards Barry Joyce & Partners, noted in a statement on the report. “It’s the downside of having such a strong biotech cluster in the region.”

Mesa West Capital looked at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco’s impressive performance, its increasingly strong market and its solid ownership and decided to put its money where its mouth is. The portfolio lender has provided a partnership involving affiliates of Dune Real Estate Partners L.P. and DiNapoli Capital Partners L.L.C. with a $130 million first-mortgage loan for the refinancing of the 802-room hotel in downtown San Francisco.

“In the context of the hotel world, definitely lenders are warming up to the San Francisco hotel market because it’s arguably, outside of New York, the strongest hotel market in the United States,” Thomas E. Callahan, co-president & CEO-West, with PKF Consulting USA, told Commercial Property Executive.

Dune and DiNapoli snapped up the Hyatt Regency San Francisco from a subsidiary of Strategic Hotel Capital L.L.C. in 2007, after which point the team initiated a major renovation program at the 19-story property. Built in 1973 along the waterfront at 5 Embarcadero Center, the lodging destination sits in the bustling Financial District and features 67,000 square feet of function space, as well as a fitness center, restaurant and lounge.

As Ronnie Gul, principal with Mesa West, noted in a press release on the refinancing deal, the Hyatt Regency San Francisco is “outperforming the market in both rate and occupancy.” It’s an impressive achievement given the enviable strength of the city’s hotel market. The lending community may not be as keen on the hospitality sector as it is on multi-family, however, there are always exceptions and San Francisco’s hotel market is one of them.

“Room rates and RevPAR are extremely high,” Callahan said. “Most hotels’ occupancies are in excess of 80 percent, room rates of most hotels increased 14 to 15 percent in 2011 over 2010, and most people are forecasting room rates to increase at 8 to 10 percent this year.”

Furthermore, he added, there is no new construction on the horizon in San Francisco, as opposed to New York, where a fair number of new rooms are scheduled to come online.

The San Francisco hotel market’s positive fundamentals and strength are the keys to opening the door to financing in the current environment. “The truth is, of course, most lenders aren’t really excited about hotels per se, but if you are a lender looking to lend money on hotels, San Francisco is perceived as one of the best markets you can be in.”

Continuing the trend of a high transaction volume in the Texas markets, Core Real Estate and BayNorth Capital Inc. have sold The Plaza at Enclave to an affiliate of Azrieli Group, a real estate development and investment company located in Tel Aviv. Holliday Fenoglio Fowler L.P. marketed the property on behalf of the sellers and arranged financing for the buyer through Cornerstone Real Estate Advisers, an investment subsidiary of MassMutual.

Dan Miller, a senior managing director with HFF, called The Plaza “one of the finest office buildings, if not the finest, in West Houston,” after the transaction closed. The building was completed in 2008 and is currently 100 percent leased to Dow Chemical Corp. as its regional headquarters as well as to Ridgewood Energy, Petrofac and HRT America. The six-story, 344,295-square-foot Class A property is situated on eight acres of property and has LEED Gold certification.

Houston, which weathered the economic downturn better than most other metro areas in the United States, has been in the news quite a bit recently. Just yesterday, the city saw the signing of a 4.2 million-square-foot leasing-and-management contract signed by CBRE Group Inc. for the five buildings in the Houston Center complex. Last week, Cassidy Turley picked up a 2.5 million-square-foot management contract in Houston and Dallas. And, after signing a 358,100-square-foot lease at 1 Houston Center in late January, plastics and chemical manufacturer LyondellBasell saw the building renamed for the firm.

According to a fourth-quarter 2011 report by services firm Cushman & Wakefield Inc., Houston turned a corner last year by regaining all jobs lost in the recession. The office market, specifically, mirrored the overall economic climate in the city, with falling vacancy rates citywide and an increase in rent levels. “The outlook for Houston’s office market will closely follow the path of job creation in the city,” the report noted. “With a strong forecast of around 3 percent job growth in 2012, absorption is likely to be again be positive in 2012.”

A rendering of the renovations at 680 Folsom St.

Riverbed Technology, an IT firm in San Francisco, has just found itself a new home. Courtesy a transaction handled by TMG Partners and financial partner Rockwood Capital L.L.C., the firm just signed a 167,788-square-foot lease at 680 Folsom St. in the city’s SoMa district. Riverbed, which currently sits at 199 Fremont St., will move into the second through sixth floors of the soon-to-be 522,000-square-foot, Class A space with a 10-year lease term. Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. represented the tenant in the transaction.

The move was precipitated by both Riverbed’s increase in space needs – the firm pulled in more than $550 million in 2010 revenue despite being founded as recently as 2002 – but also due to 680 Folsom’s current $87 million renovation project. The modernization, which also extends to the adjacent three-story building at 50 Hawthorne St., is set to complete in 2013 and includes an increase of more than 100,000 square feet of space.

San Francisco’s mayor, Ed Lee, called the move a “successful real estate transaction that will create jobs and drive innovation in our city.” And, according to a fourth-quarter 2011 report by JLL, the tech sector is leading the way in that regard. Leasing activity exceeded 9.5 million square feet last year, and technology firms represented 35 percent of that total – with high-demand areas such as Mission Bay / China Basin and SoMa districts garnering the largest Class A asking rents in the city, at $56.69 and $54.00 per square foot, respectively.

“We’re making this investment to support our long-term growth and cement our commitment to the city of San Francisco, Jerry Kennelly, Riverbed’s co-founder & CEO, said. “We think the city is the right location to attract the best talent and provide a thriving environment for our current employees.”

“High-tech industry growth during 2011 drove the best market performance in more than a decade,” the JLL report noted. “Some are raising concerns about the market trajectory and depth of high-tech based demand. Data indicate more growth ahead and another strong year in 2012, but posting numbers achieved in 2011 may prove challenging considering the lack of expansion from other industries and the amount of new supply expected to enter the market.”

Image courtesy Flickr user orphanjones

All species of consumer credit increased during the fourth quarter of 2011, according to the Federal Reserve on Tuesday, lending credence to the notion that not only are consumers feeling more confident about the economy these days, they’re backing up that confidence with their wallets — or rather, their plastic. Consumer credit as a whole increased at an annualized rate of 7.5 percent during the fourth quarter.

During recent quarters, most increases in consumer credit tended to be non-revolving, especially car loans spurred the growth of car sales in 2011, but also student loans, spurred by the fact that it’s sometimes easier to go to school than find a job. Such non-revolving borrowing grew at an annualized 9 percent during 4Q11, but it wasn’t the only driver in the upsurge in consumer credit during the quarter. Revolving credit, the sort most represented by credit cards, was also up 4.5 percent for the quarter. The figures are seasonally adjusted to take into account the normal credit surge to pay for Christmas.

In total, U.S. consumer credit is creeping back toward its 2007 high of $2.52 trillion. Despite population growth since then, total credit barely budged over $2.4 trillion in 2010. For 2011, the Federal Reserve estimates that total consumer credit will be about $2.45 trillion, which doesn’t look too different from the 2007 figure, but it represents a $50 billion increase.

Separate Indexes Point to Increasing Optimism

The IBD/TIPP Economic Optimism Index, which is published monthly by Investor’s Business Daily Inc. and Technometrica Inc., improved by 1.9 points in February, posting at 49.4 compared with 47.5 in January. The organizations note that the index is seven points above its 12-month average of 42.4 and five points above its reading of 44.4 in December 2007, when the economy technically entered into recession. Since 50 and above on the index means optimism, respondents are still a bit pessimistic, but not as much as in recent years, including late 2007, when the pessimism turned out to be more than justified.

The components of the index, which is based on a survey of 900-plus Americans, include Economic Outlook, Personal Outlook, and — interestingly — Federal Policies, or Confidence in Federal Economic Policies, a proprietary IBD/TIPP measure. The component tries to measure how optimistic people feel about the federal government’s handling of the economy, and even it was up in January by 4.5 points, to reach 40.5 (not very confident, but better than before).

There’s apparently enough optimism to go around, since the NFIB Research Foundation reported separately on Tuesday that its Optimism Index, which specifically gauges small business optimism, rose 1.8 points. It was the second monthly uptick in a row for the index.

While the index has gained 5.7 points over the last four months, the total reading is still in recession territory, the organization cautions. The index is still six points below the pre-recession average and more than 10 points below the same point in the recovery from the 2001 recession, the NFIB says. That might indicate weak growth ahead in 2012, or simply mean that the Great Recession was so much worse than the 2001 recession (which doesn’t even have a special name) that it’s taking a lot longer to climb out of it.

Greek Talks Drag On

The most recent round of talks between the Greek government and its creditors and its opposition is turning into a round of yo-yo for investors. One day, talks are stalled, and markets are nervous. The next day, the parties involved are “inching” or “edging” or just plain moving closer to a resolution that will allow Greece another fix of bailout euros, and buy European economies a little more stability; and investors are thus a little happier.

Tuesday was an up day in the mini-drama that’s the Greek bailout talks. The report was that the Greek leaders are on the verge of a deal to implement more austerity in various painful ways, so it’s no surprise that it’s a deal that’s been quite a while in coming.

Wall Street ended Tuesday up. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 33.07 points, or 0.26 percent, while the S&P 500 advanced 0.2 percent. The Nasdaq eked out a scant 0.07 percent gain.

J.P. Morgan Asset Management has turned over to CBRE Group Inc. the property management and leasing of five buildings totaling 4.2 MSF in the Houston Center complex on the east side of downtown Houston, CBRE announced yesterday. J.P. Morgan acted on behalf of institutional investors it advises. The five buildings are Class A office buildings 1 Houston Center, 2 Houston Center, Fulbright Tower and 4 Houston Center, as well as retail-based The Shops at Houston Center.

Built between 1974 and 1984, Houston Center helped revitalize the east side downtown area, eventually encouraging the development of other large-scale buildings such as Minute Maid Park, Toyota Center, Discovery Park, Hilton Americas Hotel and Hess Tower.

CBRE provided Commercial Property Executive with additional particulars on the individual buildings. One Houston Center/LyondellBasell Tower, located at 1221 McKinney St., spans 1.1 million square feet across 46 stories. It was built in 1978 and is 93.9 percent leased. The building was renamed LyondellBasell Tower late last month after a lease extension by the Dutch-headquartered multinational chemical company.

Two Houston Center, located at 909 Fannin St., spans just more than 1 million square feet across 40 stories. It was built in 1974 and is 91.7 percent leased. Fulbright Tower — formerly Three Houston Center — is located at 1301 McKinney St. and spans 1.25 million square feet across 51 stories. It was built in 1982 and is 86.8 percent leased. The named tenant is Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P., one of the 50 largest law firms in the country. The final office building, Four Houston Center, is located at 1221 Lamar Ave. and spans 674,000 square feet across 16 stories. It was built in 1983 and is 91.5 percent leased.

The retail component, The Shops at Houston Center — formerly known as Park Shops — is located at 1200 McKinney St. It spans 200,000 square feet. The Shops was built in 1982 and heavily renovated in 2003; it now stands at 80.4 percent leased. As is typical of downtown, service-center retail, it has no large anchors, instead mostly convenience and lunch-oriented tenants.

According to just-released figures from the Greater Houston Partnership, the city led Texas in job growth last year, accounting for one of every three jobs created in the state. The 10-county Houston area added 75,800 jobs, a 3.0 percent increase in metro-area employment over the previous year.

Construction lenders raised concerns about the possibility of future overbuilding in key multi-family markets, at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Commercial Real Estate Finance / Multi-Family Housing Convention 2012, which opened yesterday in Atlanta. The financiers were speaking on the panel titled “Lending for Bank Portfolios—Easy Does it or Rocky Road?”

Ken Broussard, regional executive of the income property group of KeyBank, said the bank has had conversations questioning whether there is “too much development or structures that can cause a bit of a bubble” in multi-family. “No one is saying ‘yes, probably,’ but at least there is a discussion,” he said, “because across the country all of our regions are seeing a lot of requests on new construction in multi-family.” Broussard said 60 to 62 percent of the group’s new originations in 2011 were in the multi-family sector, primarily in permanent debt.

In particular, Washington, D.C. was singled out by the panelists as a market to be cautious about. Broussard said that the multi-family markets in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore are still holding up pretty well, but that there is much discussion about possibility of overbuilding in those markets. “We are seeing a ton of construction in Washington, D.C. and New York. The gateway cities are huge right now,” agreed Pete Matthews Jr., senior vice president of M&T Bank.

Marc McAndrew, executive vice president of PNC Real Estate, said there could be too much supply in both D.C. and Seattle if all the projects that are discussed are brought to fruition. While he noted that all markets are submarket specific, McAndrew added that a close eye should be kept on Texas, where it is easy to buy land to develop real estate. The supply and demand balance of multi-family housing is currently “pretty good” in Texas, but could disappear pretty quickly, he said.

While the lenders expressed concerns, they also said they intended to maintain, if not increase, their level of lending activity this year, whether of permanent or construction debt. “A lot of 2011 for many of us was continuing to cope with the residual of the financial crisis and the recession, but we are looking forward to getting some new loan growth,” said moderator Diana Reid, executive vice president of PNC Real Estate.

Matthews said M&T Bank will be focused on serving its customers and their liquidity needs this year. “We are taking advantage relative to 2011 of getting some new opportunities with different partners,” he said. He said the bank will provide construction capital and bridge financing, in “the right structures with the right players.”

In terms of lending to the different real estate sectors, Matthews said M&T bank is making some retail construction as well as refinance loans. Development in the retail sector, he said, is so difficult that there is no great oversupply. The office market is “lukewarm,” but the bank would lend in the right situation, while industrial properties are generally steady. M&T has also started providing capital for condominiums in New York City again, he noted.

McAndrew said PNC Real Estate is targeting $8 billion to $9 billion in new product this year, spread across construction, REIT and permanent financing.

As to favorite markets, the panelists unanimously agreed that New York City was the most desirable market in which to provide debt capital. It is difficult to overbuild in New York City, said McAndrew. In addition to Pittsburg, McAndrew said he also favors to certain multi-family submarkets in Washington, D.C.

Image courtesy Flickr user PIAZZA del POPOLO

How an economy the size of Maryland’s can, in some important ways, hold the rest of the world’s economies hostage is a puzzle for future historians to work out. Yet, for the moment, that seems to be the case: Greece, reportedly so close recently to agreeing to a deal with its creditors and among its own political parties, hasn’t quite signed off on the conditions — more austerity — that would allow it to receive more bailout money and thus pay its near-term bills. Monday was supposedly the deadline for a deal, but now it’s Tuesday.

The Greek government, often described as “technocratic” and theoretically apart from political considerations, is under intense political pressure to do the deal from both the “troika” of creditors — the European Union, International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank — and the boss nations of the euro zone, Germany and France. The Greek government is also under intense pressure from the Greek population not to do the deal, or at least not the parts that would require austerity. Elections are in April.

If the deal falls through in one way or the other, the bailout funds won’t be distributed; and if that happens, Greece will be unable to pay its creditors (March 20 is the deadline for that). That would amount to a default by the country, a first for any euro-zone nation, and with unforeseeable consequences. Greece might eventually be better for it, since its economy can hardly be worse: the country contracted an estimated 6 percent in 2011. As the for the rest of the world, a hard default would certain panic investors, throwing Europe into recession. As for the impact on the U.S. economy, all bets would be off.

Conference Board Employment Trends Index Up

The Conference Board said on Monday that its Employment Trends Index increased 0.73 points in January to 105.81, up from the revised figure of 105.04 in December. The January 2012 reading is also up 5.9 percent from the same month a year ago. The strength of the index was due to positives in half of its components, according to the organization. The improving indicators included Percentage of Firms With Positions Not Able to Fill Right Now; Number of Employees Hired by the Temporary-Help Industry; Industrial Production; and Real Manufacturing and Trade Sales.

The recent upticks in the index may or may not translate into something more lasting, however. “The Employment Trends Index has been improving rapidly for four straight months, suggesting somewhat more robust job growth is likely to continue in this quarter,” Gad Levanon, director of macroeconomic research at the Conference Board, noted in a statement. “Beyond that we still remain cautious. We expect sluggish growth in economic activity in the first half of 2012 and therefore we do not foresee the strengthening of the labor market to be sustained in the second quarter of 2012.”

CRE Prices Level Off

Green Street Advisors reported on Monday that its Commercial Property Price Index didn’t budge in January. After a rally in prices during the years following the worst of the Panic of 2008, CRE valuation has effectively plateaued, according to the consultancy. The most recent peak in CRE valuation, which was in August 2007, is indexed at 100 under Green Street’s scheme; as of January 2012, the index was at 91.7, or not vastly below the most recent peak.

“Commercial property values are effectively unchanged since last summer,” said Peter Rothemund, an analyst at Green Street Advisors, in a statement. “The low-return environment was the primary catalyst for earlier gains, and although it’s still here, an uncertain economic outlook has held back gains for now.”

Wall Street nervously hemmed and hawed on Monday, seemingly worried about the situation in Europe, eventually ending down slightly. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 17.1 points, or 0.13 percent. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq were down 0.04 percent and 0.13 percent, respectively.