Commercial transactions in 2010 will double from 2009’s anemic lows but will remain between $1 billion to $2 billion short of normal activity levels, a leading investment broker predicted this morning.

Speaking at a CB Richard Ellis New England market forecast in Boston this morning, William Moylan, head of CBRE’s local investment sales team, said commercial sales would hit the $2 billion mark in 2010, up from just $1 billion in deals in 2009. Even so, that would put 2010 well below an average year’s sales activity of $3 billion to $4 billion, Moylan said.

Even without taking rental rate declines into account, Moylan said, commercial values have retreated 30 percent as tighter financing parameters have eaten into property owners’ returns. On the other hand, Moylan said, a scarcity among core cash-flowing properties has led core asset prices to rise as much as 15 percent in the past six months.

"There’s so little product on the market, and there’s so much money chasing core product, there’s a premium for it," Moylan said. "If you’re a seller of core properties, pricing will get better over the next couple months. Sellers that don’t have to sell won’t sell, unless core sellers want to move while pricing is where it is."

Moylan predicted the pricing gap between core properties and other asset classes would widen and that retail investment would precede a bounce-back in office pricing. He also anticipated the return of a 1990’s-era market for new commercial mortgage-backed securities, in which borrowers would pay higher interest rates for slightly higher levels of leverage, and mortgage pools would be sliced into three or four tranches, not 20.

JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs are currently working at the forefront of a CMBS resurgence, Moylan added.