With the severe budget cuts, and in many cases outright downsizing, hitting all levels of government, are government tenants as desirable to office building managers and owners as they were pre–Great Recession?

Construction lenders raised concerns about the possibility of future overbuilding in key multi-family markets at the MBA CREF 2012 conference, which opened Monday in Atlanta.

Approximately eight months after Trammell Crow and Principal Real Estate Investors snapped up the former Hewlett-Packard headquarters in Houston, the joint venture has secured a commitment from Noble Energy Inc. to occupy the 497,000-square-foot office building in its entirety.

The reports on multi-family’s continued surge keep coming in, and the latest comes from Marcus & Millichap: While 2011 was a great year for the apartment sector, that momentum will likely continue in 2012 — contingent on the health of the larger economy.

BRE DDR Retail Holdings L.L.C., a joint venture between Blackstone Real Estate Partners VII L.P. and DDR Corp., has just spent $1.4 billion on a 47-property retail portfolio formerly owned by EPN Group.

Grubb & Ellis has finalized the transfer of the dealer and advisory agreements of its REIT — formerly the Grubb & Ellis Healthcare REIT II — to a co-sponsorship between American Healthcare Investors and Griffin Capital.

Investor interest in the office market will gain some steam in 2012, as per results of the PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Real Estate Investor Survey, and the apartment sector will continue to attract a great deal of attention — as well as development dollars.

Continuing its capital-recycling strategy and the refocusing of its portfolio, Equity One has completed the sale of a 3.9 million-square-foot shopping-center portfolio to Blackstone Real Estate Partners.

Even as the bankruptcy estate of Lehman Brothers heads into court with its payout plan, it reportedly is in discussions with potential partners, trying to raise money for a counterbid to the offer yesterday from Sam Zell’s Equity Residential to buy more than a one-quarter interest in Archstone.

TF Cornerstone has secured $265 million in financing from a consortium of four banks for the development of 4545 Center Blvd, an 850-unit luxury apartment high-rise that will sprout up in Long Island City, Queens.