For those of you who were waiting for the bell to go off signaling the real estate markets finally have hit bottom, you may not have been listening carefully enough. At our third quarter NFI-ODCE update webinar this past December, Garrett Zdolshek, CIO and portfolio manager for Accordant Investments and IDR Investment Management, noted that recent property sales transactions executed by NCREIF Fund Index – Open End Diversified Core Equity fund managers have all (for the most part) closed at or above their carrying values.

Last year, press releases and news stories warning about this or that debacle unfolding in the commercial real estate markets were legion. Since the third quarter, these kinds of stories have been all but nonexistent. And just today, I received several announcements about studies confirming that sentiment in the real estate market is definitely heading in a much more upbeat direction.

Zdolshek also noted the majority of NFI-ODCE fund managers have b