At lunchtime (do you detect a food-related pattern in our coverage?), it was off to CoStar's office for a working lunch—in fact, it's a little hard to find the food in our picture, and they don't even look like they're talking about basketball brackets. As the quarter ends, CoStar's staff, under the gaze of research manager Richard Poland(center), holds meetings with advisory boards made up of office and industrial brokers, as well as research managers for CRE firms.

Bryant's  Scott Crooks, Colliers' Scott Amoson, and Cushman's Chris Shaner were among the two dozen professionals we found plowing through spreadsheets and databases. While final numbers won't be ready until the end of the quarter, early indicators point to a better 2010 than 2009 in Atlanta, with most office markets holding steady—no cause for champagne yet, but we'll take any improvement. The industrial sector continues to struggle, with substantial  negative absorption, especially in the Northeast market. The group also heard from Property and Portfolio Research, CoStar's recently-acquired forecasting division, which predicted that Atlanta's employment, currently lagging the nation, would catch up and outperform US averages in coming years, leading to increasing office and warehouse demand over the next 3-4 years. Let's end on that up note, shall we, folks?