From the category archives:

commercial mortgages

The High Cost of Low Interest Rates

October 4, 2011

This is not my headline, but I wish I had written it. It comes from REBusinessOnline which recently published a story about Ethan Penner and his perspective on the commercial real estate market. Penner’s comments are consistent with my view that the stampede into primary markets and core assets is overdone, just like the stampede […]

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Record CMBS Loss Severities Expose Major Flaw in Securitization, Compensation Models

February 18, 2010

I love zerohedge. Last week, they posted a story Chris Germain San Francisco whose headline blared “Kanjorski Admits There Is A Growing Bubble In Commercial Real Estate As S&P Observes CRE Losses Could Wipe Out Banking System.” You’re forgiven if you didn’t know, but Kanjorski is a Congressman from the 11th District of Pennsylvania, and […]

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Bad Commercial Real Estate Loans Are Coming in Hot! And They’re Right on Schedule

August 12, 2009

It’s summertime and the living is easy, but if you’re a distressed debt broker, this is no time to be mixing Cuba Libres at the beach. There have been 72 bank failures in the first eight months of 2009, compared with 26 in all of 2008 and just 3 in 2007. So it should be […]

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FDIC Loan Sales – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

May 18, 2009

Last week, Zero Hedge attempted to make a tortuous connection between the sales prices of “performing” commercial real estate loans being sold by the FDIC and the book value of performing CRE loans held by healthy financial firms – presumably the likes of JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and others. Aside from creating […]

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Commercial Real Estate Loan Originations Show Continued Deterioration in CRE

May 15, 2009

The Mortgage Bankers Association has released their quarterly survey of commercial/multi-family loan originations, and it shows continued dramatic deterioration in all CRE lending sectors, including an 80% plunge in bank lending. Earlier this week, I wrote that commercial real estate transaction volume had declined to practically zero, so it’s no surprise that loan originations would […]

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Commercial Real Estate Investors Brace For Pivotal 4th Quarter

May 11, 2009

REIT earnings season got into full swing last week, but there’s a lot more on investor’s minds these days that last quarter’s earnings. Transaction volume has continued to plunge, and CMBS loans placed in special servicing have continued to rise like a poodle in a jetpack. This can mean only one thing, and in the […]

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Dead on Arrival: Geithner’s Plan Can’t Stop The Tidal Wave of Commercial Mortgage Maturities

March 31, 2009

2005 is coming, and nobody can stop it. Like a giant flock of boomerangs, the mortgages originated during the boom years of 2005-2007 are returning home, and the bankers are already struggling to keep up with all the arrivals. Approximately 80% of new 2008 loans were originated simply to refinance existing maturing mortgages, compared with […]

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The Coming Bust In Commercial Real Estate: Why Developers Are Desperate For the Dole

December 23, 2008

Both Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal published stories on Monday warning of increasing trouble in the land of commercial real estate. It’s going to be pretty bad, there’s no doubt about it. But why is it bad and who is it really going to hurt? The Bloomberg headline claimed defaults could triple, but how […]

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No Bottom In Commercial Real Estate Until 2010 – 2011

December 20, 2008

The good news is that the end is near, and I’m not talking about the rapture. Mercifully (unmercifully?), Moody’s said Friday that commercial real estate is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better, but that it WILL get better. Unfortunately, that won’t be until 2010, at the earliest. For now, Moody’s […]

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Big CMBS Loans Near Default; CMBX Soars, REITs Tank

November 18, 2008

The BBB-5 CMBX is above 3250, do you know where your money is? These are record levels for the index, and they are seemingly indicative of even greater trouble in the CMBS market. If one were to use the stock price of many Mortgage REITs however, it would seem that the soaring Markit index is […]

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