The Real Estate Center at DePaul University will host a half-day conference May 28 that will explore financial recovery in the wake of the foreclosure crisis, government intervention and other seismic shifts that that have rocked the real estate industry.

Titled "On the Road to Financial Recovery: Navigating Today’s Real Estate Capital Markets," the event will be held from 8:30 a.m. to noon, with a continental breakfast at 7:30 a.m., at the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St., Chicago. The program will feature three panel discussions.

The 8:35 a.m. to 10 a.m. session, "Government Intervention into the Real Estate Industry," will feature remarks from Ronald Borod and Jonathan Black, partners at DLA Piper, a top law firm that deals with complex structured financial transactions including structured mortgage securities; and Clifton E. Rodgers Jr., senior vice president, The Real Estate Round Table, the industry’s major policy advocacy organization.

The panelists will provide their perspectives on the alphabet soup of recent government economic recovery and regulation action, including the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF), Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP), Targeted Investment Program (TIP), Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program (TGLP) and the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility (AMLF). Among the questions they will explore: How are the dollars being directed? Who is making those decisions? And what specific progress has been made in getting money invested? DePaul Adjunct Professor of Real Estate Thomas Fitzgibbon, executive vice president of MB Financial Bank, will moderate the session.

The second session, from 10 a.m. to 10:55 a.m., will examine "The Many Faces of Foreclosure."

"This will be a lively discussion because we’ve only seen the beginning of the foreclosure crisis," said Rebel Cole, real estate and finance professor at DePaul, who will moderate the session. "For every one homeowner in foreclosure, there are two and a half in the pipeline. And while most of the foreclosure discussion has focused on single-family homes, the multi-family and commercial foreclosures are becoming an even more serious problem."

Panelists for this session will be Jack Markowski, president and CEO, Community Investment Corp.; and Robert White, founder and president, Real Capital Analytics.

The final session, "Addressing Commercial Real Estate Financing in the Current Environment," will convene from 11:10 a.m. to noon. David Maki, director of North American Capital Markets, RREEF Alternative Investments; and Michael Svets, division manager, Midwest Region, Wells Fargo Bank, will discuss differing viewpoints about value and underwriting standards among borrowers and lenders in the commercial real estate market. Charles Wurtzebach, DePaul’s George L. Ruff Visiting Professor in Real Estate Studies, will moderate the session.

The event costs $125 for registrants before May 22 and $175 thereafter. For registration and information, contact Kathleen O'Hare, associate director of the The Real Estate Center, at (312) 362-7211 or kohare@depaul.edu, or visit www.realestate.depaul.edu.