Even in Portland, Austin is the darling.  

After putting tons of money into it and renting the two separate units to a senior and one to a student, thinking it was OK, someone reported it to the County and I had to remove the tenants and destroy the darling units. 

In short, I feel that industrial will quickly recover from this hiccup and emerge as the darling of the commercial real estate sector.Despite all of my rosy remarks above, I do have a few concerns about industrial.

The Bakken and the Eagle Ford are the darlings of the industry.

In the past year, East Austin has become the darling of local economic development circles.

I have renovated a single-car garage, by permits (in California), and have a darling 1 bedroom/1 bath cottage with a private yard.

Industrial properties have become “the darling of the commercial real estate world.”

Especially after I put $50k in earnest money down.Yada yada yada, and so last week, we just closed the cash out refinance and I took home a darling check for $310,000, which was pretty cool to see in my bank account for 2 seconds before I wrote a check for $300k to pay my investors back! 

If by big operators you mean syndicators, here's why they're buying1) They don't place it, investor money is on a rubber-band, it'll move to the next syndicator2) They don't place it, they lose on future asset and prop mgmt fees3) They don't place it, they lose the 2% they keep for income and appreciation4) Tell me the other type of investment that is offering tax-sheltered returns better than CRE5) Tell me the CRE doing better than apartments6) Certain places like ATL, NC, MIA , Austin are darlings and only so much inventory so they need to reach

It seems to me that Portland used to be a national news media darling but is now portrayed as dangerous and unruly.