Did Commercial Real Estate Escape its Crash?

Is the commercial real estate crash still waiting to happen, or did the market escape the same fate its residential counterpart succumbed to?  According to Fortune, there are two opposing fields of thought that have answers to this question.  The Congressional Oversight Panel still predicted a crash that would cause a "downward spiral of economic contraction," but many commercial investors believe otherwise.  Investors in the commercial market predict that the market will in fact hit a bottom, but that a crash is not inevitable.  Rather, a peristant effort to work through the commercial real estate sector's rough areas will eventually see it through to a stabler market.  Some investors have followed a trend of buying back their debt and restructuring it, while other portfolios are being auctioned off at a portion of the value.  This breathes a little more life into these properties, allowing for more flexibility on loans. This slight optimism is echoed in the Real Estate Roundtable's Second Quarter Sentiment Index.  Though the majority of the senior executives surveyed think the current market is an improvement on last year's conditions, they are still wary about the future, citing the need for available equity and more jobs creation.