Just how bad is Mobile Alabama Real Estate markets? Are there any bright spots during the recession? When will the recession end? To get the industry's perspective, San Diego Business Journal Research Director Lisa Thomas talked with four executives at commercial real estate brokerages. Here are their comments, edited for length and clarity:

Dick Bradley, managing principal of Iliff Thorn & Co.'s San Diego office. I just finished going over projections with all my brokers. And, almost universally, all of them are more optimistic this year than they were last year. I think we're sort of bouncing off the bottom of the market right now. And what I see is a slow, rather tedious pull out of this. It's kind of like being in quicksand and slowly, but hopefully surely, pulling ourselves out of this.

By midsummer, I think we'll see some strong signs of the economy. We're not going to really get well financially until lenders can, and will, lend reasonably, and when they're not scared to death of the federal government and regulatory agencies crawling all over them. Have you seen any improvement in lending policies? I have not.

There's a lot of verbiage going on right now. I hope that's followed by some action. What I am seeing is there's a lot more activity in the market that doesn't equate to deals right now. In what area or areas of San Diego have you seen the most activity this past year? It's been spotty all over the county. But one of the brightest spots in San Diego County is the biomed area up in Torrey Pines. What area has been the slowest?

General office buildings, I think, just because it's so overbuilt. But the coolest area has been investment sales because of the lending markets. Have you seen much foreign investment recently in San Diego? No, not that much. Japanese investment has slowed way down, and the Europeans are more preoccupied with investing in what was the Communist bloc countries.

James Stenderup, managing principal of Business Real Estate Brokerage Co. (Last year) was one of the weakest years in activity for like 10 years for the commercial real estate field in San Diego. I think that our numbers show that we're off in activity -- sales and leasing of commercial property last year -- 30 percent to 35 percent from the '89-'90 pace. Commercial real estate tends to be very, very oriented toward new construction and new development, and a large part of that -- more than half of San Diego -- has typically been speculative office and industrial buildings built without much tenancy. And that's virtually stopped.