CHICAGO—“Go to where the puck will be.”  That quote, by hockey superstar Wayne Gretzky, was put forth Thursday afternoon at the opening general session of the Society of Office & Industrial Realtors’ Fall World Conference here. But the message seems to permeate the entire conference.

It was picked up again Friday morning by Morgan Stanley Smith Barney First VP Peter J. Haack in his talk entitled: the Hangover: Recovering From the Damaging Effects of the Real Estate Crisis.  In effect, his remedy for the hangover is to explore new markets, and given the slow and spotty growth (he was pretty confident that if we are headed into another recession, it will be mild) of the US economy, he urged his audience to turn to emerging markets.

He rattled off a short list of the opportunities—niche markets--that brokers should be exploring.  These included healthcare, gaming, digital, mobile phones and PCs. The difference here was that Haack told his audience to look to markets such as Macao, India China, where growth in these sectors is keeping pace with—and in some cases out pacing—stateside expansion.

But whether the emphasis is on building these niches here or abroad, Haack left the crowd with three tips for expanding the service aspects