“We are bucking a number of trends,” said Derek Hunderman, managing partner with Colliers International, which was to release its 2012 commercial real estate analysis at a breakfast event at the DeVos Place in Grand Rapids.

Chief among those trends is the region’s population growth and Kent County’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 6.2 percent, a mark far lower than the nation’s 8.5 percent jobless figure.

Coupled with increased demand, improved consumer confidence and greater activity in the office, industrial, retail and investment sectors, Hunderman is ready to declare the worst of the economic downtown over for the region.

“We have definitely turned a significant economic and real estate corner, and have finally begun our recovery,” he said. “This will be a long and potentially drawn-out process, but our region’s fundamentals are strong and trending in the right direction.”

The good market news traces back to the thinning out of the manufacturing herd during the “one-state recession” that Michigan experienced over the past decade, Hunderman said.

In the industrial sector, the year will be marked by building owners choosing to repurpose what they have rather than choosing to buy or build new.

While the perception has been that there’s a glut of industrial manufacturing space on the market, Hunderman said space has been fairly limited and there is more coming on the market this year.

Last year, more than 500,000 square feet of space was gobbled up in deals involving Lumbermen’s Inc., ATEK Medical, Lacks Enterprises, Lighthouse Foods and R. L. Plastics.

But this year, Amway is vacating a large facility in Grand Rapids, and the demolition of the General Motors plant on 36th Street will make way for about 2 million square feet of new manufacturing space in Wyoming.

On the commercial office side, the downtown market has stabilized as people have snapped up vacant property at attractive rates. This has been to the detriment of suburban office space, which is lagging behind the downtown recovery, Hunderman said.

The office space market is more predictable today than any point in the last few years, he said, and third quarter 2011 saw the best absorption rate in four years.

The retail market is lagging slightly behind both the industrial and office sectors, he said. Low vacancy on primary retail strips like Alpine Avenue NW has bolstered secondary corridors like Plainfield Avenue NE, which is filling up with overflow.

The sore spots on the retail side are those properties built on land zoned retail, but constructed on locations ill-suited to take advantage of traffic counts because of site reasons. Plazas built perpendicular to the road or located behind another building “are really struggling,” he said.

In the neighborhood business districts like Cherry Street and Wealthy Street SE, fresh food, niche market restaurants like The Green Well are complementing the national chain quick-service joints like Jimmy Johns or Panera Bread bakery cafes.

Chains like Perkins restaurants, which closed local locations in June amid a company-wide bankruptcy restructuring, fail because they “struggle to be unique,” he said.

On the investment side of the coin, debt on property bought in the last three to five years is maturing in another transition year that Hunderman expects will be marked by more bank-forced refinancing.

“I think we’ll see a number of very large, key properties change hands this year because they have to,” he said.

Multi-family housing is a “sweet spot” in the industry due to the large amount of people forced into rental situations by foreclosure proceedings amid the depressed housing market, which also is beginning to show signs of life here as well.