NEW YORK CITY—In the past two months, Joseph Sitt said Thursday, “The dealer has reshuffled the deck and dealt a new hand of cards.” The Thor Equities CEO, one of five industry leaders fielded by EisnerAmper and Bloomberg at a breakfast forum titled “Commercial Real Estate Outlook: 2015 and Beyond,” charted the fundamental ways in which the world “has been flipped upside down” by recent events. Chief among them were the steep drop in oil prices, the strengthening of the US dollar and the primacy of technology in driving demand.

All of these changes have been a “perfect fit” for the US and CRE in this country, said Sitt. It's a changed view, he pointed out, from the more uncertain appraisal he had a few years back of the US economy's long-term prospects.

What's driving that economy? asked Scott Rechler, CEO of RXR Realty. In word, “talent.” Employers, and therefore office landlords, need workplaces that attract that talent, but that imperative goes beyond the office space and into the surrounding neighborhood. It has changed the dynamic not only of office, Rechler said, “but also how everyone looks at real estate in totality.”

Rechler also added on to Sitt's observation about a new hand of cards. The deck is reshuffled at least every year, he said, and everyone needs to be aware of shifts in the market as they occur.

As a case in point, he cited RXR's current strategy compared to the one it pursued a few years earlier. As the downturn evolved into the recovery, the company rode the wave by snapping up attractive properties at attractive prices. More recently, the playing field has become far more competitive and “we're not in an investment market right now.”

Asked where development is taking place, Sitt countered that a better question would be where it isn't taking place. Cranes dot the horizons everywhere, even amid rising costs for both construction and acquisition of developable parcels, as CEO Steven Witkoff of the Witkoff Group pointed out. On the other hand, Witkoff added, “I think the market is healthy.”

Of course, there's the market, and then there are individual markets when it comes to determining where the opportunities are. Speaking for himself and for Witkoff, with whom he often does deals, Ladder Capital CEO Brian Harris told the EisnerAmper/Bloomberg audience, “We go into markets that are broken, and we like them. When they recover, we pick up our stuff and move out.”

As a lender, Harris doesn't care much for construction loans, preferring to leave them to banks. The banks, pointed out Peter Sotoloff, CIO of Mack Real Estate Credit Strategies, continue to be conservative on terms, with loan-to-values generally running no higher than 50% to 55%. “We'll go up to 80% or 85% at times,” said Sotoloff, who also observed that CMBS underwriting remains disciplined, although we have begun to see a “back to the future” trend in some recent deals.

Concerns over the eventual rise in interest rates hardly came up in the discussion, with Witkoff observing that “in the great scheme of things, they're a rounding error.” That being said, Sitt observed that investors' anxiety over possible interest rate hikes was keeping most REITs undervalued. He predicted that we'll start to see some REITs going private because their valuations would be greater. The hour-long discussion was co-moderated by EisnerAmper partner Kenneth Weissenberg and Michael Kosnitzky, partner at Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP.