Even as the economy recovers, it's not likely that the real estate market can return to where it was two years ago, said at a breakfast event Tuesday. The booming market that crashed last year was driven by an unsustainable 'global investment frenzy,' said Mark Dotzour, chief economist for the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University. Not only were home loans too easy to get before the housing bubble burst, but loans for commercial real estate projects were unbelievably easy to attain as well, Dotzour said. Lenders were willing to put up as much as 97 percent of the capital for new commercial projects and demanded little in return. Even after the economy recovers, getting a loan won't be as easy as it was in the boom years until a new crop of bankers comes up with a new way to push loans through, Dotzour said. Lenders aren't the only ones who are skittish, said Frost Bank chief economist Bill Sirakos. Frost has money to lend, he said, but qualified borrowers are unwilling to start new projects in an economic slump. 'When people are facing uncertainty, they tend to pull their horns in,' Sirakos said. 'There's a tremendous amount of uncertainty out there.' Dotzour said real estate prices won't climb back to 2007 levels either. But exactly where they will level out will differ from city to city. Because San Antonio and most other Texas cities didn't see a massive spike in prices during the years preceding the economic crisis, real estate values will get closer to their pre-crash level here than other areas of the country. It could be as late as 2011 before real estate markets begin to recover. When that happens, Texas will be in a fairly good position, Dotzour said. San Antonio will have a healthy job market, and there won't be a large inventory of unused property, so people moving here will spur new construction projects. 'As soon as lending starts to move back to normal levels again, Texas cities are really going to perform well,' he said. 