The real estate market will likely remain strong for investors until early 2009, real estate magnate Sam Zell told a symposium yesterday, even as he conceded that the greatest financial opportunities lie outside of the United States’ “mature market.”

Zell, the presumptive buyer of Newsday’s parent company Tribune, told the 12th annual New York University REIT Symposium that his $39-billion sale this year of Equity Office Properties Trust to Blackstone Investors – the largest leveraged buyout ever – did not mean he had lost faith in the market. “We’ve never seen numbers as big as the numbers being bought and sold for in today’s environment,” he said.

REIT stands for real estate investment trust, a tax-beneficial structure that has surged in popularity in recent years. Zell, an early success in the field, received the Visionary Award at the ceremony. Speaking from notes and sporting his trademark business casual attire – a corduroy jacket over a striped shirt with the top two buttons open – Zell leaned over the podium as he walked listeners through 20 years of real estate market history. He opened with an anecdote about a 1984 Texas bumper sticker: “Please, God, give us one more oil boom. We won’t screw it up this time.”

He said the real estate market might as well have printed similar stickers – and that the industry did get its hoped-for boom. And though prognosticators have suggested that the market has peaked, he said the short-term outlook remains strong.

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