Best of Traffic Court
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM
Is Commercial Real Estate the Next Subprime?
David Bodamer March 4th, 2008
Here are two clips from CNBC with pros debating the fate of commercial real estate.
The first features Jeffrey Schwartz, Prologis chairman & CEO and CNBC's Erin Burnett. The second is a debate on whether or not commercial real estate is the next subprime with Darrell Wheeler, Citigroup Global Markets; Howard Davidowitz, Davidowitz & Associates; Harvey Green, Marcus & Millichap; and CNBC's Michelle Caruso-Cabrera. (Thanks to Deal Junkie for spotting these.)
In the debate, Davidowitz cites figures from Goldman Sachs on estimated write-downs in the neighborhood of $180 billion. The same statistics were featured in a Wall Street Journal article yesterday.
A team of Goldman analysts predicts the financial damage from commercial real estate could last as long as two years, which would mean “a significantly longer tail than subprime.” That is because only 28% of commercial-real-estate loans have been packaged into securities since 1995, while about 80% of subprime loans have been securitized; the higher level of securitization subjects the subprime assets to more immediate mark-to-market accounting, which is playing out in the form of the write-downs that are dominating headlines.
Wall Street has set itself up for a hard fall in commercial real estate. Banks and securities firms are facing exposure from loans and financing commitments made on commercial-real-estate projects, property they own directly and commercial-mortgage-backed securities that no one wants to buy.
To see the full entry — and follow the links — go to the Traffic Court blog at blog.retailtrafficmag.com/retail_traffic_court/.
