Commercial Real Estate (CRE): The Slow-Mo Cliff-Dive Gathers Speed
by ilene - November 17th, 2010 4:02 pm
Commercial Real Estate (CRE): The Slow-Mo Cliff-Dive Gathers Speed
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Courtesy of Charles Hugh Smith, Of Two Minds
Commercial real estate is in a structural cliff-dive, currently in slow-motion but soon to gather momentum.
With all the hub-bub about the foreclosure crisis in residential real estate, commercial real estate (CRE) has fallen off the radar screen of crises. Don’t worry, it’s still careening off the cliff; the fall is just in slow motion.
No need for a fancy report to see the signs of decay in CRE. Signs of the ongoing CRE meltdown are everywhere--empty storefronts, mall shops and vacant office complexes abound.
The causes are all too familiar: lending standards went out the window, banks loaned too much, buyers paid too much, lousy deals were avidly securitized, cash flow projections entered Fantasyland and unhealthy speculation fed widespread fraud.
Since boom-and-bust cycles of overbuilding and retrenchment are endemic to commercial real estate, it’s tempting to view this as just another post-expansion trough. Since prices have already slipped a staggering 40% from the 2006 peak, those calling this the bottom of the current cycle have some history on their side.
But beneath what appears to be a standard-issue retrenchment--a glut of inventory to work through, lenders avoiding risk instead of embracing it, and so on--structural changes in the U.S. economy are changing the CRE landscape for good--and not in a positive direction.
A long-term structural decline in CRE is not just a real estate industry concern. With some $1.7 trillion in CRE loans needing to be refinanced in the next few years, a continuing decline in CRE values could push the still-fragile banking system into a new crisis and the economy back into recession as early as next year.
The extremes reached in the boom were certainly epic: investors paid $800,000 per resort hotel room and over $500 per square foot for Class A office space, numbers which no terrestrial cash flow could possibly justify. Retail centers sprouted alongside every new exurb subdivision.
By this logic, an unprecedented boom requires an equally unprecedented bust to work through the excesses in price, debt and risk. So far so good, but there is an anecdotal body of evidence which suggests that profound systemic changes are taking place in the U.S. economy which will structurally reduce the demand for commercial real estate--not for a few years, but permanently.
1. A significant portion of CRE…
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Hotels Feel the Pain of a Glut of Empty Rooms and Lower Room Rates
by ilene - July 5th, 2009 10:20 pm
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Hotels Feel the Pain of a Glut of Empty Rooms and Lower Room Rates
Courtesy of Mish
Hotels are slashing rates to attract customers. However, it’s not working and Resorts are Suffering From Financial Strains. From Arizona Central …
A glut of empty rooms and panic pricing are taking a serious toll on hotel and resort owners in the Phoenix area.
Foreclosure proceedings were initiated against seven financially squeezed properties, two of them brand new, in the first half of the year. That’s just one less than in all of 2008 and more than double the number in 2007, according to Ion Data, a Mesa real-estate research firm.
There are other signs of financial stress, too, including major liens filed against resorts that recently expanded or renovated, and big projects being put on hold, some midstream.
The worst part: Many experts say the foreclosure woes are likely in the early stages given the volume of big-ticket deals during the boom years, the severity of the hotel downturn in Greater Phoenix and few signs business will solidly rebound anytime soon.
"This is probably still the tip of the iceberg," said Robert Hayward, principal with the Phoenix hospitality consulting and research firm Warnick & Co.
Metro Phoenix, usually a magnet for vacationers and big meetings, continues to post some of the industry’s biggest declines in occupancy, average daily rate and other measures, with many at the lowest levels on record, according to Smith Travel Research.
Preliminary figures show June occupancy was about 45 percent, nearly 10 percentage points, or 17 percent, below June 2008, when occupancy was already hurting. Most are calling it an industry depression, rather than recession.
Richard Warnick of Warnick & Co. said he’d be surprised if nearly all hotels and resorts, here and across the country, weren’t in technical default on their loans, falling below required minimums on debt service coverage, for example, given the sad state of travel. That is often a precursor to more serious financial problems that prompt lenders to foreclose.
Nationally, the number of delinquent hotel loans has been climbing sharply since the recession deepened last fall. The delinquency rate jumped from 0.3 percent of so-called hotel commercial mortgage-backed securities loans in September to 2.8 percent in May, according to Realpoint data provided by real-estate
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW.