Coral Reef TBC LLC, an investment group out of Hialeah, Fla., paid $22.3 million for two TBC Place buildings totaling 177,000 square feet on Stirrup Creek Drive.

The price, about $126 per square foot, is about 16 percent more than seller America's Capital Partners of Miami paid for the buildings less than two years ago.

It's unclear why America's Capital wanted to sell so soon -- and especially now, as fewer buyers roam the market.

The buildings, which are about 90 percent occupied, went on the market a year ago, when investors were riding a money wave flowing to commercial real estate in the Triangle and other growing regions.

Then lenders got more skittish

But the willing buyers who approached America's Capital apparently didn't come with enough cash in hand.

In the following months, as the economy began to slow, lenders began tightening standards by raising borrowing costs and requiring buyers to provide more equity in deals.

That washed out highly leveraged investors who had helped bid up prices of offices, shopping centers, apartments and warehouses in recent years.

And, as we know, fewer bidders can mean lower prices. But only if sellers are willing to budge.

That has created a standoff.

"There's still such a spread between where the buyers and sellers think pricing is," said CB Richard Ellis broker Ben Kilgore in Raleigh.

Those who don't have to sell are holding out until buyers can meet their asking prices, or lenders loosen up, enabling more buyers to come to the table.

Demand has made it easier to hold out in recent years.

Triangle office, retail and warehouse properties are, for the most part, well-leased, with tenants paying record rents in some cases.

But the contentment has slowed the flow of deals. Sales of Triangle office buildings totaled $242 million in the first six months of 2008, CB Richard Ellis data show.

That's about half what was spent on offices during the same period in 2007.

Kilgore, who represented America's Capital, declined to discuss specifics of the TBC Place deal.

It's safe to assume that the price paid for the buildings wasn't much higher than those initial offers to America's Capital, which has expanded its Triangle portfolio to 1.3 million square feet in the past four years.

"The thing that is very positive," Kilgore says, "is that they did come away making money on it in a really, really tumultuous financial market."