Dallas-based Butler Burgher Group Real Estate Services formed an affiliate relationship recently with Houston-based Aaron and Wright Assessment. We chatted with BBG’s CEO Diane Butler (right, with firm partner Mary Ann Barnett) who tells us lenders typically want three critical due diligence reports: an appraisal, an engineering report, and an environmental report. With this affiliation, she says, it can offer one-stop shopping. BBG will celebrate its one-year re-birthday on April 1, marking when the firm bought itself back from now defunct LandAmerica Financial Group, which acquired the firm in January 2007. It filed for bankruptcy in November of 2008.

Here's Diane with  Chris Roach, Brett Wilkerson, and Liz Allen-Knight. A significant percentage of its business, they say, comes from financial institutions, special servicers, and the FDIC as a result of distressed situations. Diane points out that good markets keep the appraisal industry active with transactions and financings, but bad conditions still bring activity (see: workouts and foreclosures). She anticipates the rate of foreclosures in commercial real estate to remain at the current pace this year because credit markets remain relatively frozen with the exception of multifamily, where the GSEs provide an active financing market, particularly HUD.