This isn't your father's financial crisis. As distress proliferates across the U.S. and a wall of debt comes due, today's owners are faced with a different — and more complicated — calculus about whether they can hold on to their buildings. Some are throwing in the towel and choosing to sell. But unlike prior downturns, the velocity of transactions has been slow going amid an air of uncertainty that has negotiations frozen in place. “It’s a different situation than the financial crisis, where you had buildings with no asset distress — they had good performance, but just because they weren’t leveraged properly, they ended up in default,” MSCI Chief Economist Jim Costello said. “There’s more problems these days on the fundamental distress side, and people are uncertain about the income in the future.” 
During the first nine months of this year, only 205 distressed properties traded hands, a fraction of the 309 distressed transactions during the same period in 2009 and close to 1,000 in 2010, according to data from MSCI Real Assets. Fundraising has also been muted, with Read the full story here. | 
