Real estate

Over two years ago, when discussing the absolutely top ticked purchase of one 666 Fifth Avenue by under-30 real estate mogul extraordinaire, NY Observer owner and now Donald Trump son in law, Jared Kushner, we said: "Looks like the commercial mortgage apocalypse is about to claim its next victim, this time in the form of the appropriately numbered 666 Fifth Avenue building, home to such previously flourishing tenants as Citi Private Wealth Management...the building's DSCR has fallen to an abysmal 0.69. Even when taking into account the $98 million (or much less) reserve fund the building has set aside to cover rent shortfalls, one can assume it won't be long before the 666 insignia again prominently graces the roof, especially since it would have to replace a laughable Citi sign." Ah, the good old days of 2009, when news mattered, data actually flowed through models, hedge funds traded on constant inside information, markets actually dipped, POMO was a clown, and central planning was merely a drop of unrecycled ink in Ben Shalom Mugabe's toner cartridge. But we digress. As usual Zero Hedge may have been just a little bit ahead of the curve, though still better late in our prediction than never. With little surprise we read in the WSJ, that after an artificial delay of over 2 years, the inevitable is about to catch up with reality, confirming that no amount of Vissarionovichian market manipulation can make up for the complete absence of cash flows. "As of March, the aluminum-panel-clad skyscraper was about $3.5 million-a-month short on debt service, say people familiar with the matter. Only $10 million remained in a reserve fund used to service the property's $1.22 billion mortgage, which is tied to the office portion of the building. Its revenues are only one-fourth the amount forecast in 2007." Next steps: technical and/or full blown default.

Today the Fed released its quarterly Flow of Funds report which is traditionally used to keep track of household net worth and general leverage. While the far more important use of this data, namely tracking shadow banking data is never in the headlines (we will present an updated version later today), the media is more than happy to present any simplistic information without much thought. To be sure, based on nothing but a jump in the stock market, household net worth increased by $2.1 trillion to $56.8 trillion. This increase was due entirely to a change in the value of Corporate Stocks held by the public ($7.6 trillion to $8.5 trillion), Pension Funds ($12.3 trillion to $13 trillion) and Mutual Funds ($4.4 trillion to $4.7 trillion), for a total change of $2 trillion. What did not go up were tangible assets such as housing, which after reversing its plunge from an all time high of $25 trillion in Q4 2006, and hitting a low of $18.5 trillion in Q1 2009, has now officially double dipped, dropping to $18.2 trillion in Q4 2010: the lowest in over 6 years. In other words, the wealth effect is working, but only as long as the Fed can continue to keep the market high. Other real assets are losing value fast. And while consumers continue to deleverage, and non-financial businesses are just barely adding new debt ($11.1 trillion in Q4 2010, a $100 billion increase Q/Q), the government, both federal and state and local, continue to binge like a drunken sailor on debt, which combined for the two increased to an all time record of $11.9 trillion. So while USA Today may rejoice at its simplistic interpretation that we are all getting richer even as real assets decline in value, UBS' Andy Lees thinks that the household leverage trends will ultimately result in stagflation.

Until the mass of overbuilt homes and commercial properties are liquidated, credit will remain tight and unemployment will remain high. What you thought you knew about the credit situation is wrong.

The Truth! The Truth! YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!!

Oh, I just love that scene. Doesn't Jack Nicholson deliver?

A significant extension to my 3 minute Q&A on CNBC's Fast Money show yesterday that, in my opinion, provides irrefutable evidence that commercial real estate is about to enter a cyclical bear market. Then again, what do I know...

What!!!???? You didn't get the memo?

I'm putting together what I see as solutions for the many pricing and valuation problems that I see coming down the pike. If you think real asset markets are a little soft now, wait until rates are controlled more by market forces than by concerted central planning cartels.

We have already seen Chinese ghost cities, rickety buildings, and a construction spree that makes our own unionized labor force seem positive antiquated. Time to add empty malls to the list. The latest confirmed sighting of Chanos' "treadmill to hell" China real estate bubble thesis comes from Bloomberg's Paul Allen who reports from Dongguan, China on the New South China Mall, which has remained mostly vacant since it opened in 2005. Allen tours the South China Mall, originally conceived as the world's largest mall, and finds retail space that has been largely vacant since 2005.  Allen reports, "The reality at South China Mall is somewhat different: shuttered shops, unfinished, never occupied by a single tenant. The few retailers that are here have favorable leases, but little profit."  Allen also states that despite obvious problems, the mall’s owners plan to expand to more than one million square meters of retail and residential space will be available.

Art Cashin, who lately looks like he is coping with the market's lunacy in a very liquid fashion, pulled a Rosie and basically went medieval on Ben Bernanke and the chairman's now infamous explanation that interest rates are up because they are really down courtesy of Richard Feynman and quantum chromodynamics, in some parallel universe in which QE2 is actually working. In a nutshell, the most famous face on the NYSE has offered to sell the Princetonian a piece of very valuable East River real estate in exchange for agreeing with the BS that the FOMC's committee is dishing out now on an almost daily basis.

Perhaps one or more of Goldman 500+ brand new partners will be interested in spending some of that middle class "wealth effect" and acquiring the latest ultra hot European property that has just come to market. Better bid fast: this one won't be around too long.

But not yet as bad as the great 1349 crash in Florence.

Prices aren’t going down forever. The good news is that the next bull market in housing starts in 20 years. That’s when 85 million millennials, those born from 1988 to yesterday, start competing to buy homes from only 65 million gen Xer’s. By then, house prices will be a lot cheaper than they are today. The next interest rate spike that QEII guarantees will knock another 25% off prices. Think 1982 again. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be long gone, meaning that the 30 year conventional mortgage will cease to exist. Just remember to sell by 2060, because that’s when the next intergenerational residential real estate collapse is expected to ensue.

I don’t think commercial real estate is the big Achilles heel for these institutions right now because of the manipulations the federal government has undertaken. I think the real Achilles heel for all these banks, and for bond markets, is going to be the residential markets. Not to be overly dramatic, but this is a huge ticking time bomb. Things are getting worse, not better. - Andy Miller

With all the hoopla around fraudclosure, it appears that pundits seem to be forgetting one important thing: namely, the fact that in addition to the $6.8 trillion in loans and leases in bank credit (per latest H.8) which is kept on the ponzi books (those afforded the mark-to-unicorn treatment by the FASB), there is also this little thing known as off-balance sheet securitization. And while the Fed was good enough to force the reclassification of around $400 billion in securitized consumer loans to bank books in March, the question of why a far greater number of securitized real estate loans continue to be carried off the bank books is (or should be) suddenly rather timely. Especially since the number is rather large: some $1,387,796,500,000 as of October 6 (seasonally adjusted) which also represent the bulk of off balance sheet holdings. Perhaps some of those very vocal advocates of how this whole mortgage crisis is nothing but a storm in a teacup can provide for a definite accounting method of how these nearly $1.4 trillion in securitizations will not be impaired. As otherwise the investing public may get some very nasty ideas that not all is well in off-balance sheet world and that this whole overture is nothing but a way to streamline the implementation of TARP 2...

There are still huge headwinds facing the residential real estate market. Shadow Inventory is not getting better, and now we have the robo-signing scandal which will only further delay recovery. Since all real estate is "local", some markets are clearly starting to find a floor. But a "recovery" whereby prices stabilize is a couple years away.