In a word, top management wants to have its cake and eat it too, suggests a report from CoreNet Global. Is the recession goes on, senior managers want corporate real estate execs to cut costs while simultaneously adding value.The key to doing that is to focus on corporate outcomes, not on real estate outcomes, says Richard Kadzis, director of special projects for CoreNet. “You have to have business acumen, you have to understand the financials, you have to know how to manage relationships internally.”How add value while cutting costs? Some examples:• Real estate execs have to walk a fine line when it comes to space. Getting rid of unnecessary space is the fastest way to cut real estate costs. But cutting too much space could leave the corporation ill-positioned when the economy rebounds. “A lot of companies are worried that they’re going to cut too much,” says Kadzis. “There has to be some flex in how you manage your real estate portfolio.”In past recessions, corporate real estate managed to balance “value creation” strategies to improve productivity with “value protection” measures to cut costs. Greater use of alternative work strategies such as hotelling or telecommuting helped to maintain this balance because they achieved both goals.• Companies continue to emphasize measures to reduce their environmental impact, but real estate executives are more sensitive to costs than, say, a year ago. The idea of paying a green premium is harder to sell; so is the cost to get LEED certified, though LEED remains the touchstone for green buildings, says Kadzis. Instead, there’s a new focus on energy efficiency.• Now may be a time for bargain-hunting. In the 1991-92 real estate “depression,” as the Urban Land Institute called that downturn, one telecom took the opportunity to buy property at 50 cents on the dollar. The same thing may happen in this slump, with companies willing to own a higher percentage of their space than in the past, when the industry average was about 60 percent leased space.