During the fall, many sources told GlobeSt.com that the general forecast for commercial real estate was uncertainty and more than the odd person or institution holding onto unrealistic expectations. As Barry Saywitz, president of national brokerage The Saywitz Company, said at the time: "You have a seller who wants yesterday's number, and you have a buyer who slings low-ball offers and sees who's desperate."

More than one person said that price discovery would be a crying need so landlords, operators, developers, and investors would have some realistic sense of what valuations and pricing should be.

A new report from Hines looked at, among other things, disparities between fundamentals and the bid-ask gap. Going into and continuing through much of 2022, buyers kept pumping capital into purchases, with lease trade-outs and the prospect of increasing rents providing the rationale for falling cap rates.