The original 109 property deal, closed in mid-2004 at a price of $124 per square foot, primarily contained general retail and grocery stores in New York and New Jersey. Jonathan Epstein, reporter for the Buffalo News, identified eight properties with 1.87 million square feet of space, and wrote that three additional properties will bring the deal total to more than three million square feet at an estimated price of $160 to $175 million.

An analysis of the holdings listed by Epstein in Developers Diversified's 2004 8-K filing shows that, although the sample size may be small, the for-sale holdings give a fairly accurate cross-section of the original deal. Many of the properties featured Tops Markets, a grocery store chain, as an anchor tenant; when the properties were owned by Benderson, Tops was a leading tenant by revenues paid. Commercial real estate bears will view this sale as a sign of how far prices have to fall across the board, but it's important to draw a distinction between distressed assets and distressed sellers. There is nothing to indicate that the properties themselves are in poor condition, but the same cannot be said about Developers Diversified. Preferred issues from the company are trading around 45 cents on the dollar, and at $5.60, common shares are off more than 90% from their early 2007 high above $70.

The company has been making its common and preferred dividend distributions in stock to preserve precious cash, and in February agreed to sell 30 million common shares and warrants for an additional 10 million shares to the Otto family, against an existing base of 120 million shares outstanding. The dilutive capital raise, and asset sales such as those being done now, are meant to raise much-needed liquidity; they are fire sale prices for forced sellers and do not necessarily indicate much for REITs with adequate capital levels.