Slowdown. Cutback. Retrench. Recession.

Buzzwords in the commercial real estate business are a lot different than just a year ago. The credit crunch and a softening national economy have set the stage for a shift in the property market in 2008.

Local job growth has already dropped significantly. And tighter lending standards make it tougher to borrow money to invest in commercial real estate.

That's the bad news.

But North Texas' commercial real estate market is better positioned for a recession than it has been in the past. Despite the endless construction cranes you see along the skyline, builders have shown restraint this time around. The situation would be a lot worse if the commercial property market was substantially overbuilt. It isn't.

You want to see a glut? Just go back to the early 1990s when there was more vacant office space in North Texas than the total market in many U.S. cities.

Indeed, this is one of the few times going into a recession that the Dallas-Fort Worth real estate market hasn't been burdened with excess.

Take the office sector: About 6 million square feet is in the construction pipeline.

Compare that to just before the late 1980s real estate crash, when almost 20 million square feet was being built. And the Dallas-Fort Worth area was only a third the size it is now.

The current office building total amounts to less than a 5 percent increase in inventory – just a blip in the market.

And the development totals in the other commercial property markets aren't much out of balance.

Overall industrial vacancy is less than 10 percent.

Shopping centers average about 10.5 percent empty.

And the apartment market is only about 6 percent vacant.

That's not much of a surplus by historical measures.

And in Dallas-Fort Worth, anything around 10 percent means the market is essentially full.

Sure, if you build the wrong project in the wrong place and can't find tenants, it will be an even bigger disaster if the economy is on the fritz.

And the amount of sublease commercial space is inching up as some building tenants consolidate. That's something to keep an eye on.

You can thank frugal lenders – who made developers put more cash in the building game this time around – for keeping a lid on construction.

And it's the chief reason that in 2007 there were only 1,500 commercial property foreclosure postings in Dallas-Fort Worth.

Back in the '80s there were that many on every corner.

Yes, even a worst-case scenario in today's commercial property market is still ahead of where things have been in previous economic and financing slowdowns.

That means the turnaround time in the current situation is likely to be shorter. And the damage done to the industry will be less.

Also, the Texas economy is expected to outperform the rest of the nation – another real plus.

Can something still go wrong with my somewhat optimistic outlook? You bet. I always expect that.

But compared with some of the real estate downturns I've seen over the last 30 years, the one on today's horizon looks like a tiddler.