Real estate investment trusts are back – and back big time.

While solo developers are for the most part scrounging for cash, REITs are emerging from one of the most brutal downturns in decades poised to capitalize on the coming upsurge.

Boston Properties is leading the way, with its share price having risen through 2010, even as the office market hit bottom.

Now with commercial real estate ready to roll again in 2012, real estate investment trusts like BXP are poised to clean up.

Standard and Poor’s recently boosted its outlook on Boston Properties, arguing the REIT will soon be cashing in on improving rents and declining office vacancies.

The hometown real estate giant also has another big advantage – lots of money to draw upon to scoop up office towers now selling for well below their peak values. (Speak of the devil, Boston Properties just closed on its $930 million deal for the Hancock Tower.)

Check out this Barron’s article, which details how a couple young hotshots leading the $211 million Neuberger Berman Real Estate fund have outperformed the market by betting on Boston Properties and other REITs.

And they see no letup in 2011, with a lot of upside ahead as the recovery in commercial real estate begins to pick up steam.

Other Neuberger favorites:

· Equity Residential, which owns a nationwide apartment empire and whose stock price soared 50 percent in 2010, to $52 a share. Equity has a big chunk of its portfolio on the coasts in cities like Boston, meaning higher rents ahead as the economy rebounds.

· Public Storage is another favorite, with the storage industry starting to raise rents on both new and old customer as the number of empty storage units falls.

· And Neuberger has also made a big bet on the hotel sector, buying up shares of Hosts Hotels & Resorts. Business travelers are back – and they pay full freight, the young stock pickers contend.

I’m betting 2011 will be a rebound year for commercial real estate. That said, which sector will lead the way - high tech, financial services or biotech.

Who knows, maybe none of the above.

In fact, one bright spot may turn out to be the national health care reform bill passed earlier this year. It is already leading to predictions that it will spark a rise in demand for space by the health sector, which already plays a major role in the Boston market as it is.

Sure, heavyweight Boston hospitals and research institutions are at least starting to dust off expansion plans in the core Longwood Medical district.

But the health care sector is also a major player in some traditional suburban office markets as well. Health sector businesses occupy 10 percent of the office space along the key, Route 128 West corridor from Lexington to Needham, Richards Barry Joyce and Partners reports.

That makes health care companies and institutions the third largest occupier of space along this section of 128.

Something positively reeks about the Patrick Administration’s decision to effectively axe the state’s stunningly successful film office czar, Nicholas Paleologos.

A veteran producer (Mississippi Burning) who also knew his way around Beacon Hill, Paleologos turned Massachusetts into a favorite destination for Hollywood moguls to shoot their films.

But last year, at the height of his success, with a bevy of blockbusters from “Knight and Day” to the “The Social Network” shooting on locations across the Bay State, a self-inflicted disaster struck.

Faced with a budget crisis, Gov. Patrick proposed slashing incentives used to entice movies and film to Massachusetts.

Paleologos was not shy in pushing back, working his old legislative connections – he is a former state representative – to defeat the plan.

But he also warned the uncertainty the Patrick Administration’s cutback proposal would create among Hollywood decision makers over the status of the Bay State’s incentives - were they coming or going - could prove as damaging.

And as I reported in my weekly B&T column on Nov. 15th, Paleologos proved to be dead right, with the number of sizable productions shot here in the Bay State collapsing overnight from roughly 12 last year to just one in 2010. (In fact, it’s not a movie but a TV show.)

For what it’s worth, the sudden demise of our once highly successful film industry is just now getting picked up by other local media outlets – another reason it pays to read B&T, but no matter.

Now Paleologos finds himself being broomed out altogether, his office being folded into another agency.

That’s his reward, I guess, for being right. If this isn’t old time Beacon Hill petty revenge, well then what is?

John Dukakis, a Hill Holliday ad executive and son former Gov. Michael Dukakis, is being brought on to head a committee that will chart a new course for the now gutted Massachusetts Film Office.

Good luck to him.

The Hub is poised to release its new commercial and residential tax rates as soon as tomorrow.

While Boston homeowners will take a hit, so will the downtown office market as well.

The commercial rate is set to rise by roughly $2 to just over $31 per thousand of assessed value, industry sources say.

It’s a move being repeated across Greater Boston as cities and towns are forced to draw more heavily from their commercial tax bases amid tough times and lean coffers.

Still, it could have been worse. Ron Rakow, Boston’s talented tax chief, managed to pull another rabbit out of his hat.

He’s found more than $30 million in new commercial market growth to tax – including new office towers that finally opened after years of construction and the expiration of a decades old tax break on the One Beacon tower.

Go Ron!

Wow, has John Henry begun channeling the late, great George Steinbrenner?

First he lays out $477 million for a Liverpool soccer club that has seen better days. Then he shells easily another $300 million more on two monster deals free agent deals for beloved Red Sox.

The spending spree, in turn, has fans on both sides of the Atlantic fretting.

Just a few weeks ago, Sox fans were were worried that he had emptied his wallet with the Liverpool deal.

So much for that theory. But now it’s the turn of Liverpool fans to be anxious, with fears that Henry’s Sox acquisitions means he won’t have anything left in the bank to upgrade their franchise, according to The Wall Street Journal.

But as I noted recently in my weekly B&T column, Henry has found the key to spending big in sports and not losing your shirt.

It’s relatively simple, but not that easy to execute, as more than one former billionaire who fell in love with a team will testify.

Henry makes money on his teams, from creative sponsorship deals to turning what was the nation’s oldest ballpark into a much envied cash cow.

In an email to a Wall Street Journal reporter, Henry explained that spending on players is determined by each team’s individual revenue.

“People don’t have a clear understanding of Fenway Sports Group. So it’s understandable that they may believe that buying Liverpool Football Club deprives the Boston Red Sox of capital,” he wrote to the Journal reporter. “But it just doesn’t work that way.”

Congressman Michael Capuano may have fallen short in his bid for a Senate seat.

But Rep. Capuano has just hauled home a whole side of bacon for his district with the FBI’s decision to build its new regional headquarters in industrial Chelsea.

Faithful readers will recall Capuano recently making the case in my weekly B&T column, not necessarily for Chelsea to win, but for the FBI to make up its mind after years of dithering on a key construction project amid a savage downturn.

After all, construction of the 250,000 square foot fortress is expected to create hundreds of badly needed jobs for local hard hats.

Of course, Capuano and Chelsea faced fierce competition from Boston and Mayor Thomas M. Menino, with the FBI spending years poking around various sites near South Boston’s steadily development waterfront.

But a move down to Southie’s ever pricier and ever more densely packed waterfront always struck me as odd.

It costs a lot more to build there than it does in Chelsea – after all taxpayers will be footing the bill.

And with the FBI seeking to establish what amounts to a security zone around its new fortress, why in the world would it make sense to build in the middle of a steadily developing waterfront district, one that is already home to the region’s largest convention complex?

That’s my question after reading the interim report looking at whether it is time to put down big money for an expansion of the six year old Boston Convention & Exhibition Center.

If nothing else, the preliminary report, put together by a blue ribbon panel of business, labor and civic leaders, provides a road map for the likely arguments to be used to support an expansion recommendation.

Citing presentations by industry experts, the report notes the city’s new convention hall lost 65 potential bookings since January 2009 because of a dearth of space. That adds up to 1 million lost hotel nights and $480 million in potential spending by conventioneers that didn’t happen as well.

More troubling, the Biotechnology Industry Convention, or BIO show, has warned it will not be coming back after 2012 if the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority fails to expand its showcase meeting hall.

And a dearth of hotels around the new convention complex is also a major issue, according to the report.

In fact, some events spend as much as $1 million per event to shuttle conventioneers from Back Bay hotels to the South Boston center, according to the panel’s preliminary findings.

All sounds pretty dire, right? The only problem is that the history of convention center construction and expansion in Boston is chock full of examples of misleading facts and figures marshaled to support ever larger projects.

The most notorious example was the rosy estimates cooked up in the 1990s to back up the construction of the new South Boston hall – and which have yet to met.

That push also included some dire warnings – the pending loss of the then popular Macworld show amid concerns that Boston was losing business since it had only the smaller Hynes center as a gathering spot for conventions.

That’s not to say the numbers about lost shows are wrong. But there is reason to be wary as well.

A key measure of business activity in the architectural field has fallen back into negative territory after showing signs of life earlier this fall.

The Architectural Billings Index fell two points in October, pushing it below 50 on a scale of 100. Anything below 50 signals retrenchment rather than expansion, according to the American Institute of Architects.

Why care? Architects are the first hired and the first fired, so when they see a pickup in business, more work is headed downstream to construction companies and other contractors.

Lenders continue to be cautious – while a sluggish economy does not help either, suggests Kermit Banker, the AIA’s chief economist.

Still, this is likely to be a temporary dip on the road to recovery, Baker contends.

“This is disappointing news, but not altogether that surprising,” Baker said. “We were anticipating a slow recovery period and it is likely that there will be some fits and starts before conditions show consistent improvement.”

And despite October’s gloomy numbers, there are signs that construction activity may be finally picking up in Greater Boston.

Possibly lured by low construction prices, a number of Hub universities and colleges are rolling out major projects, including Northeastern University and Berklee College of Music.