SAN DIEGO-If you've been attending the ULI Spring Meetings for the past decade or longer, like Zeb Bradford, chief investment officer for Atlanta-based Metzler Real Estate, has, you begin to have some kind of continuity, he tells GlobeSt.com. “You can look back four or five years to remember how bad the [commercial real estate] environment really was.”

Bradford remembers the Miami meeting five or six years ago when Paul Volcker, economist and former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, told attendees that even though the market had already started to tip over, it was going to get worse. “If people could have cancelled [their attendance at the meeting,] half would have. That was the beginning of the downturn.”

Also frightening was the meeting in Atlanta roughly four or five years ago, during which the cover story of Wall Street Journal Property Week was a large retail project in Buckhead running into trouble. “Since then, we've seen a real gradual recovery,” says Bradford. “The sense I got out of San Diego is that people are much more optimistic. There's a lot of capital about and a lot more deals getting done—certainly a lot more on the core and multifamily side than in other areas, but even the other areas are closing deals.”

Bradford says the most noteworthy trend at the meeting was increased investment activity in the secondary markets as investors frustrated about the primary markets have moved down and widened their parameters just to place capital. “The risks are different, but people are doing,” he says of secondary-market investments.

“There were questions at the meeting about whether pricing is getting to bubble-like proportions, with core markets similar to 2007 levels, but the consensus was no,” Bradford adds. “There's a good wind at people's backs right now, with a recovering economy, and there's a lot less leverage being used. Overall, the mood was optimistic, and it's been more and more optimistic over the past couple of years—the majority of people are optimistic now.”

The most surprising revelation at the meeting, Bradford says, was the speed at which prices have risen in core and secondary markets. “It has been pretty astonishing. People are going firm with very little due diligence for highly competitive assets. We've seen some sub-6% cap rates in secondary office markets, and that's been surprising lately. But it's justifiable given the rental growth and the demand of the amount of capital seeking these assets.”

Putting it down to probabilities, even though there are risks—such as interest rates increasing or the economy stuttering—these risks are low. “The economy has stuttered in the past, but this feels somewhat different,” says Bradford. “In Atlanta, and I'm sure in other markets, every available lot is being built upon. People feel better and that psychology helps, so barring a real spike in interest rates or a real tumble in Europe, the probabilities look pretty good.”