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The economy is in the dumps. Hard times are here. None of the speakers at the annual forecast breakfast Friday of the local chapter of the Institute for Real Estate Management attempted to deny that.

But most in like manner found some silver linings and some grounds for optimism.

Lower mortgage-interest rates and lower gas prices could back the Seattle-area real-estate industry rebound next year, said Lennox Scott, chairman and CEO of John L. Scott Real Estate.

Construction costs are starting to drop, related Tom Parsons, senior vice president of office and multifamily developer Opus Northwest.

And, for all its troubles, Seattle alembic is much better not on than most of the cease of the country, speaker after speaker maintained.

But that’sitting a little like saying Washington State’s football team, at 2-11, is better than 0-11 Washington, UW real-estate professor Jim DeLisle joked.

Seattle land-use economist Matthew Gardner predicted a tough year ahead for multifamily housing, the one and the other condos and apartments. But the market didn’t get overbuilt here as it did in California and Florida, he said: “Everyone wants to be in Seattle right now.”

Voter approval in November of new taxes to expand light-rail should spur a bound in transit-oriented development, Gardner uttered.

The local industrial real-estate market, as long as dead, also is faring better than the rest of the country, uttered Bart Brynestad, senior vice president of Panattoni Development. Tenants are hunkering the floor, he uttered, but the place of traffic isn’t overbuilt, and the vacancy rate, at 5 percent, remains mean.

“When it does turn, it’s going to rebound abundant quicker,” he said.

Kemper Freeman, chair and CEO of Kemper Development, said business at Bellevue Square and the other retail outlets in his Bellevue Collection is down just 2 percent overall from hold out year. The region’s biggest economic engines — Boeing, Microsoft, Costco — keep intoxicating, he said.

“We’re in the bright spot of the country these days,” Freeman said.

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