Certain words and phrases tend to become quickly overworked and trite in our modern lexicon — so much so that they lose meaning and impact.

Short of which contestants are being voted off "American Idol" each week, the most pressing domestic issue in the news these days is the distressed condition of the real estate and mortgage markets.

On several occasions over the course of this column's tenure, I've taken office building landlords to task for how they treat their customers -- tenants who lease office space. My purpose in doing so had been to call attention to their shabby customer relations and their continuing failure to treat office tenants as if they were really important to their business. I hoped doing so would result in behavioral changes on their part for the better.

This isn't the first time I've had occasion to comment on the softening taking place in the region's commercial real estate market. But, it's somewhat akin to the old advertising adage that one needs to say something several times before it begins to take root in the minds of one's audience.

Let me say right up front that I have not been a big fan of public libraries in recent years, new or old. Frankly, I can't remember the last time I visited one and what with the Internet and growth of online information, it had become easy for me to question the value of maintaining libraries, much less investing major capital into new facilities. I had concluded that technology had all but eliminated any need for places where books are kept.

There's at least one New Year's resolution worthy of keeping on the part of present and future tenants in San Diego's office market: Resolve to watch and wait for the real bargains to emerge in several commercial real estate market segments.

What follows is an abbreviated tale I've adapted from Dr. Seuss's "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," tailored to comment on certain conditions in our local real estate market.

In just under three weeks, Santa's sleigh will course its way through high- and mid-rise office buildings throughout the region just after midnight, being especially careful not to bump into the increasing numbers of "For Lease" signs pleading for attention. As magical as his sleigh might be, there's not nearly enough room to pack in the millions of square feet of vacant office space that's available these days to office tenants.

Given last month's wildfires that ravaged much of our county and the many other challenges we're facing as a region and nation, it would be easy to forget that the Thanksgiving holiday later this week should be far more than a big dinner and a few football games on TV.

While I've talked at great length in these biweekly columns about how important business and commercial tenants are to our local economy, I've not re-visited in quite a while the perilous situation we face in losing one of our region's highest-profile tenants: The San Diego Chargers Football Club.

An article in this month's San Diego Metropolitan aptly describes the conundrum that exists in today's San Diego office market where landlords who desperately need tenants for their Class A office buildings are instead driving them away with rent increases ranging from 40 to 100 percent. Hiking rents to chase away the very business you need to keep makes about as much sense as the Chargers moving to Imperial County to increase game attendance. Vacancy rates are hovering at 15 to 16 percent for downtown Class A office buildings - a range that should be somewhat disquieting to any thinking landlord.

There's a rule of thumb in advertising that suggests a commercial or advertisement needs to be heard or seen several times before it makes the desired impression. People don't respond to messages, important or otherwise, at first blush. It takes multiple impressions to move someone through the continuum of awareness, understanding and, ultimately, acceptance.

Noted fund manager Peter Lynch once observed in his "One Up On Wall Street" that he obtained his best information by simply looking at real life situations around him, rather than depending on formal economic analyses and market gurus. If real life in much of San Diego is any reliable economic indicator, then it's increasingly clear that our local economy is in the early stages of a full-blown recession.

It's been nearly 14 months since I last dealt with the thorny issue of "operating expenses," those something-extra costs in most office leases. And while, my July 18, column delved into how such creative expense formulas can typically abuse clients, nothing then compares to the more recent dire situations in which office space tenants are getting the shaft from greedy landlords who are trying to puff up such expenses to cover the patently absurd prices they paid for their office buildings.

Many friends of mine, including those closest to me, are attorneys. And, a majority of my clients also are members of the legal profession. So, today's topic is a dicey one for me personally; nevertheless, an important one that needs to be addressed.

This past December, I gave myself -- and, I like to think our readers as well -- an early Christmas present by wondering aloud in this column what the San Diego office market might look like with me in charge.

It's a good time for tenants to be shopping for office space throughout the San Diego region's suburban locales, thanks to an office market that is "in equilibrium" and even quite favorable in terms of growing vacancies in some submarkets.

Office space design is much more important to businesses than just being a budget-line item if we are to believe a recent survey of office workers conducted for one of the largest architectural firms in the world.

It hasn't been but three months since I sounded the alarm via these pages about a growing trend we're seeing: commercial real estate brokerages forming entangling alliances with developers, real estate investors and the like.

We've talked so much in recent columns about the downtown office market that now we need to take a look throughout the rest of the region, particularly the suburban areas where there has been a bustle of activity in recent months. While it's true that downtown is our civic center and the core of the region's office market, the fact of the matter is that our suburbs host some of the region's biggest and most important corporate citizens.