Credit Crunch Stymies Real Estate Financing: Market Turmoil Stalls or Kills Expensive Deals

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The 200,000-square-foot office building under construction in Presidents Park in Herndon may prove a bargain compared to the building that eventually goes up in the lot next to it.

Work on the building, expected to be finished by December, began well before the weakened financial markets tightened the easy financing the real estate industry has enjoyed this year.

"Financing today is more expensive than it was three months ago," said Jeffrey T. Neal, principal with Monument Realty, the District-based developer that plans two more buildings at Presidents Park.

Just about every sale has had to be renegotiated and several properties up for sale have been …