(Missed RealShare Real Estate 2012? Connect with conference attendees anyway and watch and listen to sessions and more at RealShare Connect.) 

LOS ANGELES-If you want to know what the hottest categories are in terms of investment dollars chasing them, you should have been at RealShare Real Estate 2012 on Thursday, where moderator Tony Natsis, a partner at Allen Matkins, asked brokerage panelists that very question. On the retail side, Dennis Vaccaro, senior managing director of retail firm Faris Lee Investments, said that what's hot in retail right now is the single-tenant net-lease category, where cap rates continue to be compressed down.

Panelist Lew Horne, an executive managing director at CBRE, talked about anything related to tech, or that is empty and next door to tech being hot. "If you look what is happening in San Jose, the Bay Area, and down in San Diego, those markets are hot and there is a lot of funding," he said. "The bay area has turned around in the last 18 months that we never thought it would happen that quickly."

But one of the best investments (no surprise) is multifamily, which has recovered substantially in A markets, according to Darrell Levonian, executive managing director of Charles Dunn Co. "They are very active and full of opportunity."

Horne also points to any kind of infill industrial "if you can find it." And if you can find it, he says "you will pay for it."

Martin Pupil, regional managing director of Colliers International, also touched upon industrial, pointing out that big box industrial has rebounded aggressively in the past 18 months. There are even developments happening in places like the Inland Empire, he added.

And although those markets are hot right now, Natsis pointed out that if he had money to spend, those options might not necessary be the next best place to spend it…so he asked panelists what is about to pop.

For retail, Vaccaro said the sector isn't recovering across the board like others…there are segments. "The secondary and tertiary markets have a lot of great opportunity, but without really knowing what's going on in those markets, and without really doing a microanalysis, it won't work, but it is a great place to be in, and is a complicated animal." For main-on-main locations in those secondary and tertiary markets, he added, "there are opportunities, but a lot of people are still scared to play in that area."

Pupil pointed out that office is very much an opportunity in some of the off beaten track markets like Austin and Raleigh as an example. The problem with office, he said, is that you have to believe in job growth and when it is going to occur. "The good news is that there is not a lot of supply coming to market, so there will be natural absorption over time." Also, if you can get it, he says that land for industrial property—if you have patient money—is a good get. "There is good money to be made if you can get the right dirt at the right price."

Whether is it retail, multifamily, industrial, land, or office, you can find opportunity, said Levonian. "If your local market expertise shines, if you understand the market you travel in, and are aware of the dynamics of the sector, you can make money in all those products today…there is opportunity everywhere."

In a preview story before the RealShare event, investment panel moderator Marc Renard, executive managing director of the capital markets group at Cushman & Wakefield of California, told GlobeSt.com that "The continued volatility of the global capital markets and the corresponding anemic returns generated by the stock and bond markets continues to drive institutional equity into commercial real estate. On a weighted average risk adjusted basis core commercial real estate has and will outperform other asset classes."

Renard said that the global search for durable yield and the aversion to risk bode well for the industry. "Limited new construction, signs of economic expansion and a low interest rate environment provide compelling justification for long-term aggressive rent growth," he says. "As a result, 2012 should prove to be an excellent vintage year for strategic acquisitions."

In his panel, Stanley Iezman, CEO of American Realty Advisors, pointed out that even though there is a great deal of volatility within the space of real estate, he has seen a number of people wanting to expand, and not pull out.

And according to Mark Higgins, president of Cornerstone Real Estate Advisers, real estate right now is in a very sweet spot among institutional investors. "We are at the beginning of a recovery cycle," he says. "Across our portfolio, and we are in all the major food groups, every single category had increases in occupancy and every property type has increases in NOI. The real estate outlook is very attractive to pension funds."

The reality, according to Iezman, is that there is a significant scarcity premium for high quality transactions. "People will start losing their discipline a bit, and step out and be riskier," he said. "People will go out to secondary and tertiary properties and B and C properties, but I don't think the core funds will be the leaders in that cycle."

Apartments, hotels and perhaps industrial are the best product types across the board," said Higgins. "Office might be the opportunity if you are a little contrarian, but it is certainly the lagging property type," he said, adding that Cornerstone is shifting to a little bit more of a value-add mentality this year.

During Renard's popular lightening round Q&A, when asking panelists if they are a net buyer or seller in 2012, the majority said buyer. When asking about more or less transaction volume in general, all panelists said there will be more. When asked whether capital or fundamentals will drive the market, panelists were divided and some said the answer is both. In terms of the strongest sector for job growth in Southern California, panelists pointed to tech, tech media and biotech.