Real estate

Where has my mid-tier non-performing real estate gone???

The bank that has been bailed out a hundred times before is, shockingly, rumored by Bloomberg to not pass the stress test. In other news, all Greek banks are doing swell for now.

As part of its Commercial Real Estate Project, PIMCO has conducted an extensive overview of opportunities in the U.S. CRE market. In this most perplexing of markets, where if one follows REIT stock prices, a V-shaped recovery is all but guaranteed, PIMCO has a notably less optimistic outlook. Based on the framework of its well-documented "new normal" paradigm, the Newport Beach asset manager is far less sanguine about investment opportunities in the market - in evaluating prospects for the most relevant CRE valuation metric, PIMCO sees a gradual return to 8% capitalization rates. "the market can expect long term cap rates near or above 8%. In this case, even if properties with floating rate debt can successfully avoid defaults in the short term, rising longer term rates will create a floor for cap rates and limit recoveries." On the other hand, extrapolating from current CMBS spreads, the prevailing market expectation is for a current and future cap rate up to 150 bps lower. Which means that as securities backed by existing assets see their cash flows dry out, as all valuable assets get extinguished, the repricing in assorted CRE fixed income securities, and their equity counterpartes in the REIT realm, will likely have a very dramatic downward repricing event in the future.

Many people have asked me how SRS and REITs share prices can defy gravity the way they have given the abysmal state of commercial real estate (CRE). Well my opinion is that the equity and the debt markets have allowed agent and principal manipulation to the extent that it materially distorts and interferes with the market pricing mechanism.

For all who think that the Fed has received the Ukrainian-cum-Marriott Garden Inn unlimited one-hour special giftset only from the TBTF banks, you are wrong: it appears the broke real-estate industry has also provided some favors to the FRBNY, and is now demanding, and receiving, preferential treatment. Tishman Speyer, whose 5.7 million sq. foot portfolio acquired from Blackstone in 2007, has been unable to renovate its insolvent properties as lenders have been unwilling to negotiate a restructuring. One of the lenders is none other than the Federal Reserve, which took over loan commitments by Bear Stearns. Crains New York reports that the FRBNY has finally relented and at what likely is a loss to taxpayers, has given Tishman $100 million to restructure its loans at preferential terms. Tishman's take on this development was pretty clear: "It's great for our tenants and it's great news for everybody we do business with,” said Casey Wold, Tishman senior managing director in Chicago. “We now have enough capital to improve the properties and lease up the entire portfolio to stabilization." Thank you taxpayers - you now have indirectly bailed out the following Chicago properties: Civic Opera Building, 10 & 30 S. Wacker Drive complex,1 N. Franklin St., 161 N. Clark St. and 30 N. LaSalle St.

There is a massive structural imbalance in residential real estate that will take at least a decade or more to unwind. 26 million homes for sale and 70 million missing buyers do not add up to a bull market. 80 million retiring baby boomers are putting huge generational pressure on the market. Losing a city the size of San Francisco in demand every year. A replay of 1929 to 1955 when prices remained flat? (XHB).

Here comes the latest destabilizing Central Bank "intervention" in Europe. The Bank of Spain, doing what Fed and the Treasury should have done with domestic toxic loans backing worthless real estate, has notified lenders that they should be prepared to set aside much greater loss reserves against assets, "such as real estate, acquired in exchange for bad debts once the holdings have been on their books for more than two years." The staggered loss provision schedule will call for a 10% loss assumption for real estate acquired in foreclosures, 20% for real estate held for more than a year, and 30% for anything held for more than 2 years. Bloomberg reports that Spanish lenders have foreclosed upon property worth nearly €60 billion, which means that very soon Spanish banks, which as we pointed out earlier are already suffering a liquidity crunch as a result of loss of access to Commercial Paper, will have to take an incremental up to €18 billion in asset write-downs, a development which will have a major adverse impact on Spain's banking sector once it funnels through the banking system, and especially once the need for liquidity spikes yet none is found.

It may take a while, but the fictitious valuations of CRE REITs will eventually come to reflect what is actually going on in the actual physical real estate world. It may be like matter meets anti-matter, investment banking secondary offering meets bricks and mortar reality. After all, the antics in Germany and greater Europe are not doing anything to actually help the debt markets.
I think I feel another "I told'ja so" coming on...

Even as the market is now surging on rumors of massive pan-European bail outs (someone explain to us how a tsunami of failed banks is equity positive... or for that matter how imminent monetization is EUR positive), Bloomberg is reporting that the liquidity crisis in Europe has struck smack in the middle: after the FinMin released a draft bill to forcibly write down real estate asset holdings by 10, investors in certain mutual funds have panicked and attempted massive redemptions, which in turn forced redemption halts by these funds which likely are woefully undercapitalized to begin with. This is just the beginning of the liquidity squeeze moving from the periphery to the core.

With populations soaring at the bottom end of the economic spectrum, the demand for new apartment buildings is going to be huge. Immigrants joining impoverished gen Xer’s and Millennials aren’t going to live in cardboard boxes under freeway overpasses. Institutions combing the landscape for low volatility cash flows and limited risk are starting to pour money in.

If Goldman Sachs wanted to reduce its exposure to subprime mortgage investments, why didn't it simply sell the assets it owned? Two reasons: First, those large sales would have sent a signal that something was terribly, terribly wrong, and thereby pushed prices down further. That's how supply and demand normally works. Second, Goldman professed to be market maker, which uses its trading book to instill confidence. It ostensibly bought, sold and inventoried mortgage securities to provide stability and liquidity to the marketplace. Of course, we now know that such market confidence was entirely misplaced. To sidestep these issues, Goldman and other major banks found a solution that subverted the laws of supply and demand, and escaped the price discovery of a transparent marketplace. They fabricated synthetic CDOs, such as Abacus 2007 AC-1. These toxic assets, invented out of thin air, made the meltdown worse than it otherwise would have been.

Richard Koo's latest observations on the US economy are as always, a must read. The critical observation from the Nomura economist explains why the realists and the naive idealists are at greater odds than ever before: the government continues to perpetuate, endorse and legalize accounting fraud in the hope that covering everything up under the rug will rekindle animal spirits. The truth, as Koo points out, is that were the FASB to show the real sad state of affairs, the two core industries in the US - finance and real estate, would be bankrupt. "If US authorities were to require banks to mark their commercial real estate loans to market today, lending to this sector would be extinguished, triggering a chain of bankruptcies as borrowers became unable to roll over their debt." In other news Citi, Bank of America, and Wells just reported fantastic earnings beats on the heels of reduced credit loss provisions. Nothing on the conference call mentioned the fact that all would be bankrupt if there was an ounce of integrity left in financial reporting, and that every firm is committing FASB-complicit 10(b)-5 fraud. One day, just like Goldman's mortgage follies, all this will be the subject of epic lawsuits. But not yet. There is some more money to be stolen from the middle class first, by these very firms.

In the rush over Goldman coverage and volcanic news, a very relevant piece of market update may have gotten lost, namely that Moody’s/REAL All Property Type Aggregate Index just peaked once again. Moody's reports that this index "measured a 2.6% price decline in commercial properties in February. This decrease comes on the heels of three consecutive months of rising prices, and brings the level of commercial property prices 41.8% below the peak measured in October 2007. Values are now down 25.8% from a year ago, and 41.6% from two years ago." This is the first time prices have fallen since October of last year: have we just hit price resistance in CRE?

How many ways can a Wall Street Banker bend over an institutional client before they scream "ouch"??? Let me count the ways (with a spreadsheet, may I add)...

Europe faces a commercial property debt timebomb with almost €1 trillion (£896bn) outstanding from the sector and a quarter of that potentially distressed. The UK accounts for 34% of the €970bn total, with Germany second with 24%. Not to worry, global pension funds are busy snapping up properties but do they really know how long it will be before this crisis blows over? And what if it gets a lot worse before it gets better? Are pensions prepared to deal with those losses?