Is the worst ahead or behind us? Reporters covering commercial real estate these days all seem to be asking the same question: Has commercial real estate hit bottom? The answer is critical because investors are going to spring to life in a big way as soon as they feel that prices have stopped falling.

CNBC just posted an interview with two major players in the commercial real estate world to explore the current state of affairs, and both felt that we're not in the clear yet. The bad news, according to Harvey Green, Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Services president/CEO is that:

• another 500,000+ jobs were lost in April
• commercial real estate unfortunately follows anywhere from 6 to 9 months behind those unemployment numbers
• CMBS debt is part of the issue surrounding predictions about the "second shoe dropping"...and over the next 5 years, CMBS really picks up in terms of the volume of loans coming due

The good news:

• we are seeing a lot of product come on the market that you don't usually see, like trophy assets going on the selling block, so for a long term investor, it is an opportunity
• the building cycle has slowed dramatically and when the economy for real estate returns, it's going to return very quickly so there are "strong reasons to look at commercial real estate right now"

 As for where we are in terms of a turnaround, John Dewberry with Dewberry Capital in Atlanta, had this to say:

"The unraveling of the CMBS market has not occurred yet.There are going to be great buying opportunities for those with capital, but the pain of commercial real estate...anybody who thinks that it's already come full on, has, in my estimate,  missed the mark."

And we've all read about the huge volumes of commercial real estate loans that the FDIC is unraveling right now. Curious about who's buying them and how much they're going for? The average is 46 cents on the dollar and as for who's buying, here's the list.