Though a little weaker than residential real estate, reports onsales and leasing of nonresidential real estate are still mostlypositive.

That's according to the Federal Reserve Board's Beige Book released Wednesday which revealed commercial realestate was mixed across the 12 districts since the last analysis inNovember.

The report was prepared at the Federal Reserve Bank ofPhiladelphia and based on information collected on or before Jan.4, 2013.

Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Kansas City,Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Richmond, Va., San Franciscoand St. Louis make up the Fed's 12 districts.

The Boston district reported a drop in leasing beyond normalseasonal trends with contacts citing fiscal cliff uncertainty as afactor. Demand for commercial real estate loans appeared to be softening and thepipeline for new construction projects has diminished significantlysince the last Beige Book, Boston reported.

Minneapolis and Kansas City have experienced increased demandand tightening commercial real estate markets while Philadelphia,St. Louis and Dallas all reported more modest increases innonresidential real estate activity. Still, Dallas reported thatconstruction was expected to pick up in the commercial real estatesector in 2013.

When it comes to providing financing, loan demand was largely unchanged in the Philadelphia,Cleveland, Richmond, Kansas City and San Francisco districts withmost reporting a continuation of slight to moderate growth in totalvolume.

The New York, Atlanta, Chicago and Dallas districts reportedstronger demand than the last Beige Book analysis while the St.Louis district reported a slight decline. Commercial real estatelending was cited as a particular bright spot by New York,Cleveland, Kansas City, and Dallas.

Some increased lending in Philadelphia, Chicago and Dallas wasdriven by businesses taking out loans for special year-end purposessuch as tax planning and dividend payments, according to the data.Cleveland, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas and San Francisco all reportedstrong auto lending.

Like commercial real estate across the districts, the quality ofborrowers applying for loans was also a mixed bag.

Banks in the New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, KansasCity and San Francisco districts reported improvements in assetquality.

Lenders were described as competing aggressively for highlyqualified borrowers in Philadelphia, Richmond, Atlanta, and SanFrancisco. In Atlanta, this stiff competition may be leading toloosening credit standards, as there was some indication that bankswere more willing to increase their tolerance for risk, accordingto the Fed's report.

Chicago banks also reported some loosening of standards. On theother hand, lending standards remained largely unchanged in NewYork, Cleveland and Kansas City.