PRETEND IT'S DECEMBER '08. HOW'D YA' DO?

Not surprisingly, respondents to last week's poll weren'tjumping up and down. But neither were they jumping off of ledges.Some 50% of the 254 respondents said they'd Keep Their Heads AboveWater, while 37% claim they'd Rally and Profit. A sad 13% saidthey'd Bleed. Ward Caswell, just settling into his new post aschief research officer at Colliers International in Boston, iscounting on the fundamentals to pull us through:

"It's going to be an interesting year, no doubt about it. We'veseen a slowdown in many parts of the economy that are affectingsales and leasing markets. A lot of folks have used the wordopportunity and some may look at that as being optimistic. I lookat it as being quite realistic. Even though many aspects of thecapital markets have gone to the trenches, there's still a lot ofcapital out there that has very specific real estate goals taggedto it that are looking for acquisitions.