I know the DeedStreet forum is usually reserved for Social Media and Real Time app talk. But wanted to go a little off subject. I was talking to a friend today about the “way it was.” We were talking about how a few years ago, our clients couldn’t place money fast enough (we are both in commercial real estate).

Funny how times have changed. Today, the CRE market is practically non-existent and our clients are begging us to find them a way out of their projects. The conversation though, quickly changed over to whether things will ever go back to the way they were. Now this conversation was particular to commercial real estate, but this question can easily be extended to real estate in general. Will we ever value real estate the way we did a few years ago? And by this, I mean, will underwriting and common sense ever go out the window again when evaluating real estate?

Now, I think most would say “never. we’ve learned our lesson. We’ll never let real estate bubble like this again.” However, I’m not so sure that we should be underestimating “greed” so much. As Warren Buffett had said, “What we learn from history is that people don’t learn from history.”

I would love to hear your thoughts.