Real-estate risk/Random speculation

What do you get when you combine lack of experience with a lack of formal background into the subject?  Well, I'm not sure, though some thoughts going through my mind since I originally decided that I like REITs and would like to have a significant portion of my portfolio in them.  I can see the damend for office space dropping as financial services shrink.  This will probably result the price of office heavy REITs falling/yield increasing, along with slower growth rates and possibly a small decrease in distributions in the short term.  Part of me expects that things will become oversold and open up opertunities to invest.

I can't really see industrial property moving very quickly.  Yeah, we're loosing car plants, which means that all the connected stuff is going to suffer a bit.  I'm tempted to whimsically remark that all the parts for anything these days come out of China anyway so it'll stay contained.  In all practicality though, it's a bit of a toss up in my mind over whether or not closures will out pace exsisting escallation clauses in the continued leases.

Retail, I have a hard time seeing a decline in high quality retail properties, however, I don't think they'll grow as fast as they would otherwise.

Finally, with regards to residential properties, I'd expect population trends to change slowly.  Granted, rents are probably going to have to come down, or stay the same when unemployment goes up.  I don't expect a major hit.

So in summary, these are the rantings of someone who knows nothing, spent next to no time studying the situation and absolutely no track record.  I expect overall slower growth, and offices will take a significant beating, but there'll be an overshoot period where they'll represent a good buy.