Last week's GlobeSt.com Quick Poll asked readers if thebailout is already improving CRE's outlook or if it will take timeto help the industry. Michael Gottilla, Colliers Houston &Co.'s director of research in Teaneck, talks to GlobeSt.com aboutwhy the bailout was necessary but may not halt falling marketprices.

The commercial real estate market existed in a parallel universefor the first phase of the credit crisis. Prices kept rising evenafter Bear Stearns collapsed. Commercial real estate prices behavedas if they were impervious to the storm battering the globaleconomy. Things had been so good for so long that there certainlyappeared to be a great deal of willful neglect on the part ofmarket participants regarding the obvious linkage betweencommercial real estate and the economy. In September, when LehmanBrothers went bankrupt and AIG was forced to turn to the governmentin order to survive, the perception of invincibility wasshattered.

Those events caused a cessation in lending that was a wake upcall for the commercial real estate industry. Commercial realestate market participants could no longer hit the snooze button.Since that time most people in the commercial real estate markethave done their best to conceal their apprehension. Regardless,they have come to the realization that they exist in the sameuniverse as everyone else. The bailout has done very little to makethat epiphany less worrisome.