According to PricewaterhouseCoopers' Real Estate Value Cycles report, most markets will continue to contract for at least the next 18 months with a turnaround projected for 2004. "I've noticed that realizations about the slowing economy suddenly seem more definite," says the study's author, Peter Korpacz, in an exclusive interview with GlobeSt.com.

The director of PricewaterhouseCoopers Financial Advisory Services' Global Strategic Real Estate Research Group notes that "leasing has almost stopped, rents are going down. This is not going to right itself by the end of the year. When you go from 5% GDP growth to 0.7%, we're in a recession."

Despite his prediction that the slump will linger for at least another 18 months, Korpacz sees the report as a testimonial to the hard-earned lessons of a decade ago. While the massive overbuilding of the late 1980s may not have triggered the recession that followed, it nonetheless decimated the industry. This time around, Korpacz says, things are significantly different.