According to Fifth Third Asset Management economist Mitch Stapley, a credit crisis "of Biblical proportions" is slowing commercial real estate lending and development nationally, adding to a difficult business environment for office furniture makers.

 

While he does not see commercial real estate experiencing anything like the residential meltdown, he told executives to expect a slow period of new office construction for the next year or so, with perhaps a 2 percent to 5 percent decline nationwide and then a recovery in 2009.

 

"It's going to be soft," Stapley said following his address at the annual meeting of the Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturers Association in Chicago that coincided with the third day of NeoCon.

"We're in for a slow growth period here, and the real question is bank capital and the access to bank capital," he said. "Funding for projects, certainly over the next year or year and a half, is probably going to be tough."