1. Commercial Real Estate

I have been looking into this for a few weeks now and came up with
ssr - Ultra short real estate -- for Canadians this will have to be hedged for currency.http://www.proshares.com/funds/srs.html

Thanks casey. I found this on Seeking Alpha:
http://tinyurl.com/73dnse
Goes into quite a bit of detail and even gives some names to follow up.

3. Corporate bonds

I have been looking at this as well but have not found a suitable investment yet.
I would prefer convertible bonds as they can be converted into equity at a later date.

I'm a bit leery of convertibles. Often they have conversion clauses that can leave you holding the bag at a bad time. What I'm looking for is yield with relative safety of principle. Of course that's what buyers of MBS's were looking for too..LOL!

ebear