A panel of experts at the NAIOP event.

Commercial real estate deals have slowed to a crawl, a sharp contrast to one year ago when the outlook was filled with good news for office, building sales and retail.

“There are not a lot of tenants looking for space in Boston,” David Fitzgerald, a partner at CB Richard Ellis told a gathering of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties at the Westin Hotel in Boston last week. “Demand has slowed, and the question is how bad and for how long?”

While Fitzgerald hailed a handful of deals totaling nearly a million square feet of office space in the downtown by four giants firms, he noted that 180,000 square feet of sublease space is back onto the market due to cutbacks by Houghton Mifflin Co. and First Marblehead.

And there’s more to come, he added.

Sales Woes

Lisa Campoli, executive vice president at Colliers Meredith & Grew, delivered the bad news on sales: “Investment sales volume is down dramatically as a result of the credit crunch. We came into 2008 in a state of paralysis. We had no idea whether the sky was about to fall or if life had changed permanently.”

Campoli noted there’s a disconnect on what is going on in the capital markets and Boston’s real estate fundamentals. Generally, she said, Boston is doing relatively well compared to the rest of the nation.

Still, so far this year, there have been $6.88 million in building sales and $1.25 million in pending deals. At the close of last year, deals totaled $5.6 billion, Campoli added.

Gary Holmes, president of R.W. Holmes Realty Co., told the packed audience that deals exist but decision-making is taking longer. Peter Bekarian, vice president of Jones Lang LaSalle and a Cambridge broker, said while there are no longer big players like Google and Microsoft Corp. looking for space, the vacancy rate is flat and rents are rising.