I have some business associates who are selling their commercial buildings at a steep discount now. The typical scenario involves a commercial mortgage that comes due at the end of this year, and the landlord knows he’d have to come up with a pile of cash to pay down the balance before refinancing the loan. They all expect the appraisals on these properties to be about 25% to 40% lower now than they were when the loans were originally cast five years ago.
The overseas Chinese need a place to park their money.
Vacant office space in the US is cheap and there’s a lot of it.