(Save the date: RealShare Industrial 2012 comes to The Bankers Club, Miami, December 5 - 6.)

ORLANDO—Is distressed commercial real estate activity in Florida up or down? According to RealtyTrac, Florida REO activity on the home front increased 31% year over year but the news from the commercial front is mixed.

Stillwater Cos., for example, is staying busy focusing on bank receiverships and managing foreclosed properties on behalf of financial institutions. The firm just completed three receivership assignments in Merritt Island, Tampa, and St. Cloud for local banks, picked up five new receivership assignments over the past two months, and been nominated for three more pending court appointment.

"We differentiate ourselves by tackling all kinds of situations for our clients, such as moving abandoned equipment, performing maintenance, securing building envelopes, curing notice of violations and handling building clean outs," Jerome Stewart, a former banker and founder of Stillwater, said in a statement. "Our competition does not offer the range of services that we do.”

But Franklin Street has a different story to tell. Darron Kattan, a partner with Franklin Street, reports REO activity is significantly lower this year. Well under half the firm’s deals will be REO in 2012—and the ones that are still REO tend to be the most complex in ownership or financing, in bankruptcy or owned by lenders that have been slower to work inventory through their books.

“Most of the actual REO inventory tends to be smaller and in lower income areas, where the properties were too ‘small’ of a problem to get the proper attention from the lenders,” Kattan says. “The larger properties and ones in better locations have mostly worked through their issues by either a refinance, sale, note sale, or simply by the market improving around them.”