As Morgan Stanley is ‘fessing up to it’s commercial real estate woes, it’s lament sounds eerily like many local, Sarasota based commercial real estate investors.

•Morgan Stanley is writing down 80% of the properties in Fund V U.S. and 60% in Fund VI International.

•Two investors — the $60.5 billion New Jersey State Investment Council and the $3.86 billion Contra Costa County Employees Retirement Association — backed out of their commitments to its latest closed-end fund, the approximately $5 billion Morgan Stanley Real Estate Fund VII. Contra Costa had committed $75 million; New Jersey, $150 million. (Fund VII is closed to further commitments but is technically open to tie up loose ends, according to sources close to Morgan Stanley.)

•Its $5 billion open-end core real estate fund, the Morgan Stanley Prime Property Fund, has a line of investors asking for a total of more than $500 million in redemptions as of year-end 2008. The fund returned -19.8% for the 12 months ended March 31, underperforming the NCREIF Property index but outperforming the NCREIF Open-End Diversified Core Equity index, according to fund information provided to investors.

The truth is, everyone got swept up and believed their own hype about the market. Look to the contrarians who resisted the temptation of easy money to see the way out of this mess.