Global property slide may be long

By Ilaina Jonas

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Commercial real estate markets in many parts of the world are falling and in the United States, the largest market, things are poised for a deep, lingering dive, experts said.

"I've never seen the sector get so tied up in knots as it is right now," Jacques Gordon, global strategist and head of Research for LaSalle Investment Management, told the Reuters Real Estate Summit this week.

Commercial real estate markets around the globe are facing debt repayment issues, declining values, and deteriorating rents and occupancies in different combinations.

Prices are resetting lower at different speeds and magnitudes country by country.

"The UK is way out ahead," Gordon said. "We do not see the U.S. teed up to be the number two in the re-pricing process. We are seeing Australia, even signs of Japan and Germany out ahead in terms of re-pricing."

But in the United States, commercial real estate players -- buyers, sellers, and lenders -- have been taking other avenues to avoid selling at prices most experts believe are half of what they were at their peaks in 2007.

Commercial real estate sales worldwide in the second quarter are expected to be off 67 percent from a year earlier, according to research firm Real Capital Analytics, with U.S. volume down 83 percent.

Lenders have been reluctant to foreclose because financing for sales is scarce and instead are extending loans.