Commercial Realestate will lead the second half of this recession, from what I know. The commercial investors have been eating their own equity in the form of interest payments while land goes unsold, development is stifled by manufacturing, distribution, warehouse and office vacancies fall or stagnate. There will come a time when the big money runs out and losses will be booked and unloaded. Commercial property values are way down and default in many cases will be a better option than a fire sale. Also, most development is financed by LLC investors that are protected. When they run out of money and the proceeds from a sale will not cover a loan, they will liquidate, fold and walk. The old money out there with staggering lien leveraged assets will see lenders in a second wave of crisis. The unit numbers will not be so high but the dollars will be staggering.
Why haven't we heard more about this? It is bad business for an investor or a proprietor to announce that he is having trouble with investments or that he can't pay his bills. It is the investors that are credited with securing financing from lenders and much of it comes with secured down payments and the credit worthiness of the application participants. They do not want to announce, "Hey, we are just going to give that one to the bank." then turn around and ask, "Look we have all this money. Can we get a loan to purchase and develop this property?" They do all they can to hid their identities as it is for this very reason.
“Commercial Realestate will lead the second half of this recession...”
I have read this before on FR but I don’t believe I have seen this anywhere else. Here in Colorado Springs, I see some commercial stuff, like strip shopping centers either remain full as weak tenants fall away and others replace them, or the centers empty out entirely. And some of the ones that empty out you would think because of location they would not have this issue, so I don’t know what is at play there. Hopefully, bankers and such learned something from the residential mess and are planning for the commercial, but who knows.