Category Archives: Asset Bubbles & Inflation/Deflation

Real Estate Markets – Not Even Close Enough to Haggle

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Participated this morning in the monthly Columbia Business School RE Circle, the Paul Milstein Center for Real Estate International Real Estate Alumni Meeting: Updates on RE Markets Around the World.

Participants confirmed my opinions that:

Sellers are looking for 4-4.5 caps and buyers looking for 5-5.5 caps – indicating a 20% decline in value and too far apart to even haggle.

Funds that were lending at 8% and leveraging up with an A-piece from a bank can’t cause banks now charging 8%.

Lots of money sitting on the sidelines and more funds being raised with nowhere to go.

Equity funds raising money for debt funds to play lower down on the LTV.

Only asset class that’s optimistic is single family.

Values down 20% and market won’t start clearing for 6 months or so.

Banks/Special Servicers will cooperate to avoid a panic.

Mezz/Pref Equity that’s really Equity + Hope Note is the future.

Declining Real Estate Values

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Bloomberg published an article – Global Real Estate is Sitting on a $175 Billion Debt Time Bomb – Bloomberg – regarding the rise in distressed real estate debt and decline in values. 

The $175B in distressed real estate debt is quite striking – exceeding the combined total distressed debt of the next 9 largest distressed debt by asset types.

US real estate has declined 9% in value while UK real estate is down 20%. MSCI opines in its 2023 Trends to Watch in Real Assets – MSCI that London offices will need to decline by another 9% to be of interest to investors. But the US is lagging, not avoiding.

Of course. both distressed debt and declining values are intimately interconnected and amplified by the low cap rates and interest rates of the past.

For example, a property with $1 million net income valued at a 4.5 cap rate is $22.2 million and an 80% LTV loan would be $17.8 million. The same property at a 5.5 cap rate is valued at $18.2 million – an 18% decline in value. The loan LTV is now 98%. In short, the sponsor’s 5-10% equity and most, if not all, of the LP equity is wiped out.

Although the property could still be servicing the low interest rate debt, the minimum loan required LTV is out of balance – to which the regulators could turn a blind eye allowing the lenders to kick the can down the road – but the real distress will eventually come with the refinancing when the loan must be paid-down or deed handed over.

So, we’re entering the stage in the cycle of white knights and loan-to-own and bets on if we’re buying at a discount or catching the knife on the way down.

 

NYC Real Estate | NYC Luxury Market | 432 Park Ave

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It took two months longer on average to sell a New York City luxury apartment in 2016 compared with 2015. That’s according to the real-estate agency Olshan Realty, which on Wednesday published its year-end report on the New York residential market.

It backed up other reports released earlier in 2016 that showed the luxury market in Manhattan, New York’s most expensive borough, had a tough year. Unlike other price segments of the housing market, there’s an excess of luxury apartments, giving buyers power to negotiate asking prices lower.

“New York City’s rental market has been mostly steady, except at the high end, where the inventory has risen and rents have drifted down,” the Federal Reserve said in a recent Beige Book based on comments from its contacts.

Source: NYC Real Estate | NYC Luxury Market | 432 Park Ave

Fear Spreads of a Housing Crash in Canada | Alternative Economics

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The reading marks a change from almost unbridled consumer optimism in a housing market that has carried the Canadian economy since the 2008 global financial crisis, even as policy makers warn price gains in some cities are unsustainable.

Source: Fear Spreads of a Housing Crash in Canada | Alternative Economics

The Global Real Estate Bubble Is OFFICIALLY Bursting | Seeking Alpha

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Bubbly cities like Singapore and Vancouver have started punishing foreign housing investors that have pushed up property prices to unaffordable – and unsustainable – rates. Foreign investors are now being taxed in many of these areas, and as a result, their real estate markets have begun to tank.During this housing burst, the most high-end, desirable locations will be hit the hardest.

Source: The Global Real Estate Bubble Is OFFICIALY Bursting | Seeking Alpha (sic)

Big Wall Street Firms Make Lame Excuse for Volcker Rule Non-Compliance, Ask for Additional Five Year Extension | naked capitalism

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Anyone who knows bupkis about finance knows if you can’t sell a financial asset in three years (or more accurately, seven), particularly with public and private market valuations at record levels, the problem is not liquidity. It’s valuation. These banks are carrying these holdings on their books at inflated marks and don’t want to recognize losses……..

“It’s laughable that the biggest, most sophisticated financial firms in the world claim they can’t sell the stakes year after year,” said Dennis Kelleher, CEO of non-profit Better Markets. “Everyone else in America has to comply with the law and Wall Street should also.”

Source: Big Wall Street Firms Make Lame Excuse for Volcker Rule Non-Compliance, Ask for Additional Five Year Extension | naked capitalism

The “New Housing Crisis” – Not Enough Rental Homes? | Zero Hedge

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The point here is that while the housing market has recovered – the media should be asking ‘Is that all the recovery there is?’

With 30-year mortgage rates below 4%, we should be in the middle of the next housing bubble with prices and home ownership rising. The question the media should be asking is “why?” Furthermore, what happens if the “bond market bears” get their wish and rates rise?

The housing recovery is ultimately a story of the “real” unemployment situation that still shows that roughly a quarter of the home buying cohort are unemployed and living at home with their parents. The remaining members of the home buying, household formation, contingent are employed but at lower ends of the pay scale and are choosing to rent due to budgetary considerations. This explains why household formation is near its lowest levels on record despite the “housing recovery” fairytale whispered softly in the media.

Housing-NetHouseholdFormation-072516

While the “official” unemployment rate suggests that the U.S. is near full employment, the roughly 94 million individuals sitting outside the labor force would likely disagree. Furthermore, considering that those individuals make up 45% of the 16-54 aged members of the workforce, it is no wonder that they are being pushed to rent due to budgetary considerations and an inability to qualify for a mortgage.

The risk to the housing recovery story remains in the Fed’s ability to continue to keep interest rates suppressed. It is important to remember that individuals “buy payments” rather than houses, so each tick higher in mortgage rates reduces someone’s ability to meet the monthly mortgage payment. With wages remaining suppressed, and a large number of individuals not working or on Federal subsidies, the pool of potential buyers remains contained.

The real crisis is NOT a lack of homes for people to buy, just a lack of enough homes for people to rent. Which says more about the “real economy” than just about anything else.

While there are many hopes pinned on the housing recovery as a “driver” of economic growth in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 – the lack of recovery in the home ownership data suggests otherwise.

Source: The “New Housing Crisis” – Not Enough Rental Homes? | Zero Hedge

Deutsche Bank Chief Economist Joins SocGen Chairman in Trying to Foment Banking Crisis to Get Germany, Brussels to Blink | naked capitalism

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Another race to the crash: who goes first Deutsche Bank or Italian Banks? Can bankers get politicians to pull the emergency cord? Who gets screwed? Stay tune for Crash 2.0.

Why bank executives are stoking a banking crisis, with Deutsche Bank in their crosshairs.

Source: Deutsche Bank Chief Economist Joins SocGen Chairman in Trying to Foment Banking Crisis to Get Germany, Brussels to Blink | naked capitalism

Our global financial system is broken. Here’s a plan for fixing it | World Economic Forum

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The result is what has been called secular stagnation, new normal, ugly deleveraging, balance sheet recession and Japanification. I call it “QE infinity”: a prolonged period of low growth and low interest rates, where policy-makers persist in implementing policies that won’t fix the problem. They won’t ever say they’re out of ammunition, but central bankers are starting to look like naked emperors. “Is monetary policy by itself going to create growth, employment? You seem to give a lot of responsibilities to the European Central Bank. Can monetary policy create growth by itself? The answer is no. Monetary policy can create the economic conditions for growth,” ECB President Mario Draghi told the European Parliament last year. Put differently, there is only so much monetary policy can do to re-start growth: it is an anaesthetic, not a cure. to the European Central Bank. Can monetary policy create growth by itself? The answer is no. Monetary policy can create the economic conditions for growth,” ECB President Mario Draghi told the European Parliament last year. Put differently, there is only so much monetary policy can do to re-start growth: it is an anaesthetic, not a cure.

Source: Our global financial system is broken. Here’s a plan for fixing it | World Economic Forum

Manhattan Retail Market | Retail Vacancies NYC

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These days, hardly a week goes by without a new report about struggling retailers and rising vacancies in Manhattan.

Average retail asking rents fell year over year in seven of the borough’s 12 main retail submarkets in the first quarter of 2016, according to Cushman & Wakefield. And several prime shopping districts now have availability rates well over 20 percent, while stretches on Bleecker Street and Broadway have become notorious for their empty storefronts.

These signs of trouble are coinciding with record spending by retail investors and the rise of the retail condo.

Investors have shelled out $25 billion on Manhattan retail properties since the beginning of 2011, according to data from Real Capital Analytics. And in recent years, buyers have been more willing to dig deeper into their wallets and accept higher per-square-foot prices — forcing them to find tenants willing to pay high rents to justify their purchases.

Since 2000, RCA’s database counts 24 Manhattan retail condo sales that were priced at $10,000 per square foot or more. All of them closed after July 2011 and 17 closed in 2014 and 2015.

“I don’t want to say it’s a bubble but it’s been constantly bid up for six years,” Lee & Associates Managing Principal Peter Braus told The Real Deal.

Consolo added that retail condo sales prices have gone into the “stratosphere” in recent years.

“It is clear that there were numbers that were far too aggressive and the market just couldn’t keep up,” she said.

While real estate insiders are reluctant to call it a retail bubble, many acknowledge that a correction is imminent.

Michael Weiser, president of commercial brokerage GFI Realty Services, said the best indicator of whether Manhattan’s retail market is weakening is vacancy.

Availability rates — which measure the amount of retail space that is vacant or will become available — rose in all but one of Manhattan’s main retail submarkets between the first quarters of 2015 and 2016, according to Cushman.

Among those neighborhoods, several stand out: On Fifth Avenue between 42nd and 49th streets, a staggering 31 percent of retail space was available for lease. Meanwhile, Soho clocked in with a 25 percent availability rate followed by Herald Square and the Meatpacking District (both at 22 percent), Times Square (20 percent) and Madison Avenue (17 percent).

Braus said that owners who paid a steep price for retail space are more reluctant to accept lower rents. “That’s one reason why you’re seeing a lot of vacancies in those neighborhoods,” he noted.As it happens, those six districts were also home to the bulk of the priciest Manhattan retail purchases in the last two and half years, accounting for 57 of the 73 sales priced at $100 million or more recorded by RCA since January 2014. (That excludes office properties with retail components.) They are also among the neighborhoods where asking rents saw the steepest rise over the past two years, the numbers from Cushman & Wakefield show.

Worth the time to read the entire article here:

Source: Manhattan Retail Market | Retail Vacancies NYC | Thor

Bear Stearns 2.0? UK’s Largest Property Fund Halts Redemptions, Fears “Vicious Circle” | Zero Hedge

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Beginning of the end?

In the summer of 2007, two inconsequential Bear Stearns property-related funds were gated and then liquidated, exposing the reality of the US housing bubble and catalyzing the collapse of the financial system. While equity markets have rebounded exuberantly post-Brexit, suggesting all is well, British property-related assets have tumbled and, as The FT reports, Standard Life has been forced to stop retail investors selling out of one of the UK’s largest property funds for at least 28 days after rapid cash outflows were sparked by fears over falling real estate values. As one analyst warned,

Source: Bear Stearns 2.0? UK’s Largest Property Fund Halts Redemptions, Fears “Vicious Circle” | Zero Hedge

Goldman Sachs Probably Won’t Have To Pay All Of The New $5 Billion Mortgage Fraud Settlement | ThinkProgress

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Since the initial JP Morgan deal that sparked outrage over tax deductions, consumer relief wiggle room, and other fine-print details that make such deals cheaper for companies than press releases indicate, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and other lawmakers have tried to force federal and state lawyers to stop the doublespeak. Warren and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) have pushed for the Truth in Settlements Act since early 2014.The measure would require federal agencies to clearly delineate between deductible and non-deductible settlement costs, and include an estimate of the actual corporate costs of such deals in their formal communications about them. It passed the Senate in September, but hasn’t moved out of any of three separate committees with jurisdiction over it in Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) House.

Source: Goldman Sachs Probably Won’t Have To Pay All Of The New $5 Billion Mortgage Fraud Settlement | ThinkProgress

Why Commercial Real Estate Is Next: ‘Challenging Technicals’ Are About To Become ‘Weak Fundamentals’ | Zero Hedge

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There is a growing sense of tighter financial conditions, particularly to the commercial real estate sector. Late last year the regulators issued a joint statement on Prudent Risk Management for Commercial Real Estate Lending and the latest Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey (SLOOS) shows that banks tightened their lending standards to commercial real estate meaningfully in 4Q15…. The growing sense of gathering clouds in terms of tightening financial conditions to commercial real estate translates into a more challenging road ahead for US commercial real estate.

Source: Why Commercial Real Estate Is Next: ‘Challenging Technicals’ Are About To Become ‘Weak Fundamentals’ | Zero Hedge

The Great Mortgaging | VoxEu.org

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Interesting study that real estate debt has become the center of the financial industry, increasing fragility, and worsening recessions while diverting resources from industry.

In other words, banking today consists primarily of the intermediation of savings to the household sector for the purchase of real estate. The core business model of banks in advanced economies today resembles that of real estate funds: banks are borrowing (short) from the public and capital markets to invest (long) in assets linked to real estate.

By contrast, nonmortgage bank lending to companies for investment purposes and nonsecured lending to households have remained stable over the 20th century in relation to GDP. Nearly all of the increase in the size of the financial sectors in Western economies since 1913 stems from a boom in mortgage lending to households and has little to do with the financing of the business sector.

The great mortgaging | vox.

The Implosion Is Near: Signs Of The Bubble’s Last Days | Seeking Alpha

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Yes I confess, I agree with David Stockman.

The central banks of the world are massively and insouciantly pursuing financial instability. That’s the inherent result of the 68 straight months of zero money market rates that have been forced into the global financial system by the Fed and its confederates at the BOJ, ECB and BOE. ZIRP fuels endless carry trades and the harvesting of every manner of profit spread between negligible “funding” costs and positive yields and returns on a wide spectrum of risk assets.

Moreover, this central bank sponsored regime of ZIRP and money market pegging contains a built-in accelerator. As carry trade speculators drive asset prices steadily higher and fixed income spreads steadily thinner—- fear and short interest is driven out of the casino, making buying on the dips ever more profitable and less risky. Indeed, the explicit promise by central banks that the money market rate will remain frozen for the duration and that ample warning of any change in rate policy will be “transparently” announced is the single worst policy imaginable from the point of view of financial stability. It means that the speculator’s worst nightmare—–suddenly going “upside down” due to a sharp spike in funding costs—-is eliminated by central bank writ….

At the present time, for example, 40% of all syndicated loans are being taken down by sub-investment grade issuers. This is materially higher than the 2007 peak, and is accompanied by an even more virulent outbreak of “cov-lite” credit terms. Indeed, upwards of 60% of these junk loans have no protection against debt layering and cash stripping by equity holders—-notwithstanding their nominal “senior” status in the credit structure. The obvious implication, of course, is that the Fed “easy money” is being massively diverted into leveraged gambling and rent stripping by the LBO houses. Three times since 1988 this kind of financial deformation has led to a thundering bust in the junk credit market. Why would monetary central planners, who allegedly watch their so-called “dashboards” like a flock of hawks, think the outcome would be any different this time?…”

The Implosion Is Near: Signs Of The Bubble’s Last Days | Seeking Alpha.

Canadian homes 20 per cent overvalued: ratings agency | Toronto Star

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Fitch Ratings says Canada’s real estate market is as much as 20 per cent overpriced and cautions the government may need to take more measures to slow down borrowing on homes.

Fitch is the second U.S. financial agency to sound the alarm on Canadian home prices in the past week, with the Morningstar research firm predicting a 30 per cent correction was possible over the next few years.

The latest warning comes as the Teranet–National Bank composite house price index for June showed prices rose 0.9 per cent from May and were up 4.4 per cent from last year.

Canadian homes 20 per cent overvalued: ratings agency | Toronto Star.