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Day of reckoning for commercial real estate in 2012 – largest amount of loans maturing next year as $150 billion in CRE debt comes due. Federal Reserve running out of options in hiding financially disastrous real estate loans.

The Federal Reserve has tried its best to hide the secrets of past banking blunders deep in its balance sheet.  Commercial real estate (CRE) loans made in haste during the real estate bubble are part of this national disgrace in banking folly.  As the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury digitally print the dollar into oblivion the bad CRE loans still linger in the Fed balance sheet.  As it turns out the Fed has become the dumping ground for all things real estate and has traded toxic loans for quality liquidity to fuel the banks back up.  CRE debt in the form of empty shopping malls, failed hotels, and tumbleweed occupied strip malls is only a flavor of what the Fed is taking on.  Yet many of these loans are still occupying the balance sheet of many banks.  As it turns out, there was so much junk in the CRE market that the Fed could only balloon their balance sheet and still not encompass one half of the CRE market.  Many CRE loans are coming due in 2012.  Is the day of reckoning for CRE coming in 2012?

$150 billion coming due in CRE loans in 2012

Over $150 billion in CRE loans are maturing in 2012 bringing the day of reckoning closer.  Why is this a problem?  First, the CRE market has completely imploded:

Source:  MIT

CRE values just like residential real estate have cratered and are down over 50 percent since their peak.  Much of these properties require actual economic streams of income coming in for example in strip mall rents or hotel occupancies to keep servicing the debt.  Unlike a home that has other sentimental values a CRE property is strictly a business decision.  The Federal Reserve is seeing the tanking of valuations at the absolute worst time.  The Fed treating the crisis as one of liquidity simply exchanged U.S. Treasuries for toxic CRE debt to drinking buddy banks.  After all what is the harm in keeping the junk for a few years and when prices recover, a simple hand off and the public has no idea what happened except they just have to contend with greater goods inflation as their purchasing power falls through the floor.  However the bailouts of 2007 never helped the overall economy because the crisis is one of solvency, not liquidity.  The working and middle class are struggling because their purchasing power has washed away over the decades and the bailouts were simply geared to the too big to fail banks.

CRE is a giant problem because the number of buyers vying for a strip mall is relatively small.  Unlike a residential property, if the price drops low enough on a home the market will respond.  If a strip mall was poorly built in a bad location you may have no buyers regardless of cost.  And make no mistake banks have shut the door on CRE fairly hard:

Source:  World Property Channel

The fiasco in CRE can only last so long.  The Fed balance sheet has exploded during this crisis and you can rest assured billions of dollars in CRE loans are floating in the un-audited figures:

CRE is merely following the pattern outlined by the residential real estate bubble effectively creating a situation where a double bubble developed:

Source:  The American

2012 is looking like the day of reckoning for CRE debt.  First, you have an American public that is absolutely frustrated by the ineffective handouts to the banking system of the country.  The hunger for a full Fed audit is getting louder and louder.  Politicians will sway in the way of their financial backers but only to the extent they feel they can get away with their smoke and mirrors and deceive the public.  That shell game is becoming harder and harder to maintain.  At what point does the government step in and do what is best for the economy and not the big banking interests?  How does bailing out a failing hotel or empty strip mall really help the average working American?  It doesn’t.  Banks were eager to make these loans and profited handsomely during the bubble.  Now they don’t want to deal with the consequences of taking on too much risk so they rather socialize the losses on the public.  This is not capitalism but a banking corporatocracy.  CRE debt will come due in large amounts in 2012 and unless prices soar to the sky in the next year, some major rebalancing will need to occur.

There is no inflating out of the real estate mess and CRE is no exception.  Unless household incomes go up disposable income is going to get tighter.  We are already seeing more money being eaten up by food and energy and baby boomers will definitely see more money flowing into the healthcare industry complex.  From one frying pan to another it will become about priorities and CRE will move lower on the list.  The day of reckoning for CRE is coming next year and only time will tell how the market will respond.

My Budget 360

Part of the success that the Federal Reserve has achieved with boosting up large banks stems from its secretive ability to forge shadow bailouts of residential and commercial real estate loans.  The more secretive of the previous two comes from the commercial real estate (CRE) industry.  During the height of the housing mania in the United States CRE values were estimated to be worth $6.5 trillion.  A hefty sum no doubt and with $3.5 trillion in loans securing these properties, a significant cushion of equity was in place.  Yet with the crash in all real estate values, banks were left holding a smoldering portfolio of empty shopping malls, luxury hotels, and in some cases fast food outlets.  Today CRE values are estimated to be at $3 to $3.5 trillion putting many loans in a negative equity position reminiscent of many individual homeowners.  This issue of bailing out CRE was never discussed openly with the American people because it would have never carried any political muster.  So what the Federal Reserve accomplished was to create a system where banks were able to exchange toxic loans in place of U.S. Treasuries without taking up an open dialogue with the public.  In other words a clandestine bailout.

The continuing shadow bailout

The problem with bailing out the commercial real estate industry is that it shifts costs from businesses and more crucially big banks to working and middle class Americans.  The value of money that Americans now carry is becoming worth less each day with these continued actions.  Do Americans make the direct connection?  I think the Federal Reserve is making the bet that most will not understand this convoluted connection and simply go on with their daily lives blaming whatever other topic of the day is filtering in the financial press.  Without a question however the Fed is making Americans poorer.  The values of CRE have fallen dramatically and if we look at the current chart of their values, we see that they are making no immediate comeback:

Source:  MIT

CRE values are down by 50 percent from their peak only a few years ago and if we are to actually adjust for inflation the figure gets even more dramatic.  It is hard to imagine how values can go up.  If you built a shopping mall in say an Arizona suburb that never drew the expected traffic, then it is likely the loan will not be serviced and the bank and borrower would be in serious trouble.  This has happen thousands of times over across the United States.  Most of the CRE troubles are coming online in the next few years:

Source:  ZeroHedge

However instead of these loans going into default and becoming issues for banks, these are now on the Federal Reserve balance sheet and will cause problems for taxpayers.  In many ways we are already seeing this being reflected through higher commodity and a weaker dollar.  As the Fed talks about how open they are and how transparent their accounting is we simply need to look at their overall balance sheet and realize that most of the bailouts are still lingering in their hidden books:

Source:  Cleveland Fed

What is interesting is that we are given an overall eagle eye view of their portfolio but we are not given deeper knowledge of what is in that $2.75 trillion portfolio.  It would be a big difference between a shopping mall that is fully occupied from one that has zero traffic.  In the first case you can get an actual value and it would be worth something.  There are many shopping centers and malls built in the mania that really have no value and even serve as a piece of real estate blight in local communities.

One piece of CRE that does not fall in this category is a Ritz hotel:

“(WSJ) The developers of the Ritz-Carlton Highlands hotel at Lake Tahoe apparently have leaned a little too far over their skis. Bank of America Corp., the lead lender in the hotel’s $157 million mortgage, has filed a default notice against the property.

Developer and owner East West Partners, based in Avon, Colo.,  is “talking daily” with its lenders to resolve the situation, East West senior partner Blake Riva said. At issue: $10 million of the loan has matured without being paid, and the lenders want East West to pitch in another $8 million of capital.

Otherwise, East West and Ritz-Carlton, a unit of Marriott International Inc., say the hotel is doing well. Like many mountain-resort businesses, the Ritz is temporarily closed and slated to reopen by mid-May, after the “mud season” passes and vacationers return to the area on the California-Nevada border.”

I find it fascinating that we are bailing out a place where 99 percent of Americans will never be able to afford yet are using their future earnings in taxpayer dollars to bailout this hotel.  As banks talk about the wonderful economic recovery their production of loans tells you another story:

Banks are making fewer loans in the CRE world while pushing more and more of the toxic debt onto the Federal Reserve balance sheet.  People need to remember that the Fed is a quais-governmental body that is mainly concerned with protecting the too big to fail banks.  From its inception in 1913 this system was never designed for the mom and pop investor or the small town bank.  The purpose of the Fed was to protect giant banking interests by consolidating banking power.  As the Fed talks about economic success many Americans are asking, “economic success for whom?”

My Budget360

The media has done a fantastic job painting over the enormous sinkhole of a problem that is commercial real estate (CRE).  U.S. banks hold over $3 trillion in commercial real estate loans on properties that were once valued at over $6 trillion.  Today those values are down to roughly $3 to $3.5 trillion depending on what metric you believe.  How is it possible for a market that has lost $2.5 to $3 trillion to become largely hidden in the dark from the mainstream media?  We constantly hear about $3 billion deficits or other issues but is the trillion dollar figure just so enormous that they don’t even bother investigating?  It is probably more likely that the Federal Reserve has concealed massive failures in CRE by allowing banks to play a game of extend and pretend that continues today.  The shadowy problems of empty shopping centers, vacant car dealership lots, and misplaced strip malls is largely a taxpayer problem now.  Banks made these irresponsible loans but had the Fed hand over taxpayer loot in exchange for worthless real estate.

“Another empty strip mall”

CRE bringing down FDIC banks

Source:  MIT

CRE values are still hovering near their trough and are likely to move lower.  The only reason these prices haven’t moved lower is because banks are more generous with the borrowers of CRE debt since these holders are grappling with multi-million dollar cuts in each deal.  Banks would rather pretend a mall is valued at $100 million instead of marking it to a real value of $40 million or less.  The fact that the Federal Reserve allows this to happen is financial chicanery.  Can you pretend to the government that you really don’t make $100,000 a year so instead you will act as if you make $30,000 a year and act accordingly?  This is what is happening here.  Banks are essentially allowing these toxic loans to be laundered through the system in exchange for taxpayer dollars.  The Fed is betting that the public doesn’t wake up to this scam.

CRE is a giant and pernicious problem.  With residential real estate it hits directly home and many American families are considered home owners.  This bubble has garnered most media attention as it should.  Yet CRE debt is enormous, larger than every state budget deficit combined by many times!  In fact, the losses on CRE loans is larger than the state budget issues.  Of course the Fed wants the public to look away from the real culprit behind the decline of the American middle class.  The scheme was to build junk and pawn off the loans to average Americans whether they wanted to accept the debt or not.

The cost of CRE problems

Banks have no faith in this recovery.  Look at the above regarding commercial loans.  Banks continue to claim that the reason for the taxpayer bailouts was to help the American public weather the economic storm and for banks to continue lending to average Americans.  Instead, as you can see above, commercial loan lending has collapsed and banks have hoarded money and speculated on the stock market casino on the taxpayer dime.  This money was used to shore up bad balance sheet problems and for gambling on the stock market to boost profits.  In short it was one giant swindle perpetrated on the public.

And think about the supposed recovery we are experiencing.  If we were truly growing and expanding don’t you think there would be healthy demand for loans as businesses expand their workforce?  Wouldn’t it be logical to conclude that commercial loans would reflect the supposed increased demand from a booming American economy?  Of course the only boom occurring is for the top 1 percent who are siphoning off the wealth from average Americans to spin their continuing speculation in the stock market.  Many are starting to wake up from this collective sleepwalk where taxpayers were robbed in open daylight.

The problems are coming up

Source:  ZeroHedge

What is even more problematic is many of the CRE loans are going bad in the next few years.  Just like residential real estate is now experiencing a second collapse, CRE will have another move lower.  Banks can only carry fantasy paper for so long.  So far we have been paying for it through QE1, QE2, TARP, and other convoluted programs to launder money and devalue the U.S. dollar and decrease the quality of life of average Americans.  The public did not sign up for this.  The banks talk about shared responsibility and many are paying for it by losing their homes and going bankrupt.  Millions are facing this economic “responsibility” on a daily basis.  What penalty for the banks?  Instead, they get bailouts and continue to pretend the junk loans they made on concrete disasters are worth inflated values only to shovel them off to taxpayers.  How is it that there are no buyers for these supposedly highly priced items?

CRE debt exposes the worst aspect of the bubble.  Pure profit motive by supposed sophisticated investors on both sides of the coin with no financial responsibility or ownership.  This isn’t some poor family in a low-income neighborhood taking out a subprime loan.  This is actually a supposed responsible bank and a supposed financially savvy investor.  There is no justification for one penny of a bailout here.  Yet the Federal Reserve continues with their hidden bailout where they support malls in Oklahoma to Chick-fil-A.  Don’t expect to hear about this on your nightly news.

My Budget360

The massive commercial real estate market is already plaguing the weak balance sheets of banks.  It is the case that each Friday, we are likely to see one U.S. bank fail because due to high levels of commercial real estate (CRE) debt on their books.  This market is likely to cause the failure of hundreds of banks and put the economy down into another real estate funk.  The amount of commercial real estate transactions shows no sign of recovery in this market.  And why would there be any recovery?  This is an area for hotels, strip malls, condos, and other projects that usually reflect a healthy and growing economy.  We do not have that and the problems embedded in CRE are going to stifle any growth for years to come.

First, we should look at the trend in commercial real estate prices:

Source:  MIT

The above chart is extremely helpful in showing how quickly bubbles can grow but also, how fast they can deflate.  It took 7 years for prices to peak and only one year for prices to collapse.  We have seen similar trends in the residential real estate market.  The crash is rather obvious but why did it happen?   The reason prices collapsed so fast was that it was a speculative boom.  Lending became much too easy with the Federal Reserve flooding the system with easy capital trying to find a home.  In more sober times, CRE deals were scrutinized with a due diligence and it was inspected to produce cash flow from day one with sizeable down payments and strong financial reports.  But this is not the case and many of these giant deals ended up going the way of the little to nothing down world of residential real estate.

The market in CRE is enormous.  This market is over $3.5 trillion and is likely to damage the regional banks much more deeply than larger banks that have a taxpayer safety net:

Source:  T2 Partners

The current weakness in the economy is a realization that problems are still deep in the system.  Think of how large the CRE market is.  Roughly $3.5 trillion in debt secured by casinos, strip malls, empty condo projects, and other real estate that likely is underwater.  Keep in mind that at one point this market was over $6 trillion in value.  The CRE market looks to be valued at $3.5 trillion to $3 trillion with the same amount of loans outstanding.  In other words, the market sector is underwater.

The problems with commercial real estate have shown up in prime locations like San Francisco to Chicago.  These CRE debt problems are not a reflection of poor areas as we are at times led to believe.  These were high flying speculative bets that were only successful as long as the pipeline to greater fools was in place.  When that line quickly dried up, so did the system and all the funding that kept the game going.  It was the perfect definition of a bubble.

If we really want to see how quickly things have dried up in this market take a look at the following:

Source:  Real Estate Channel

“At the peak in 2007 $522 billion in sales transactions took place.  In 2009 it collapsed to $52 billion, a drop of 90 percent.”

This is why the CRE market is the next shoe to drop and with so much debt outstanding it is going to put an incredible amount of pressure on already weak balance sheets.  What is even worse is that the U.S. taxpayer is going to be likely on the hook for all these speculative bad bets.  If you haven’t noticed the bailouts don’t do much for the real economy except shoring up the investment banks on Wall Street.

The amount of lending in this market has dried up and so have profits in this arena.  Now the piper needs to be paid but with what money?  How can you service your commercial real estate debt if you don’t have any money coming in?  This is where delinquencies are spiking.  It is also the case that the peak years for CRE debt maturities won’t hit until 2011 and 2012:

Source:  Real Estate Channel

Unless CRE prices miraculously recover the problems are only going to get deeper in this market.  Commercial real estate unlike residential real estate has quicker turnover rates on their loans.  That is, many of the loans need to be rolled over every 5 to 7 years.  Normally on a cash flowing property this is no problem but with trillions of dollars underwater, this is a major issue coming down the road.  The FDIC with a negative deposit insurance fund is taking over banks on a weekly basis and is having a firsthand look at the tremendous amount of bad debt on bank balance sheets.

Banks clearly understand what sits on their balance sheet and if anything, nonperforming loan volume has shot up:

Source:  Bankregdata

Throw in CRE debt, troubled residential mortgages, defaults with credit cards, auto repos, and all other debt instruments and you can understand why the chart above is spiking.  But think of it this way; the credit card market is approximately $850 billion in debt outstanding while CRE debt is up to $3.5 trillion.  What do you think is going to cause bigger pain down the line?

My Budget360

What Isn’t Happening with the $3 Trillion Commercial Real Estate Market: Loans Falling and Vacancy Rates at Record Heights at 10 Percent.

With commercial real estate, you can learn a lot from what isn’t happening.  We all know that the $3 trillion commercial real estate market is already taking a drubbing in terms of pricing.  CRE prices are down over 40 percent from their peak elevated levels.  Yet with commercial real estate you don’t have the typical headline grabbing stories of individuals being forced out of their homes in foreclosures.  With CRE it is seen as a more calculated business move and those losing their shirts are those who should have known better.  Now this is how things should be but the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve have already back stopped the entire banking system so implicitly, the failing of any real estate is now a direct burden to all taxpayers.

What is not happening is a natural stable demand from the market.  Why?  Just like the residential market, commercial properties were over built.  We have years of excess to work off.  That is why I simply don’t buy the notion that we will somehow be back on the run by tweaking a few balance sheet numbers.  The problem is many structures are now built and are sitting vacant yet the loans still need servicing.  Who is going to pay for it?  The U.S. Treasury has already had low key talks about a preemptive bailout for this industry labeled Plan C.

While banks tell the public all is well, their actions speak louder:

If things were improving in the overall economy it is likely you would see a natural demand for CRE loans.  People want to build something or start a new business and loans are easily available so long as you can fill the building.  The chart above shows a very clear pattern.  Less and less loans are being made in this sector.  Do banks know something the public doesn’t?

Larger housing complexes fall in the commercial category.  Typically these are places with more than 4 units at least on the residential front.  Assuming a market demand, you would expect to see permits rise:

The above chart clearly shows anything but this.  This is an important indicator because those who sense the economy is turning are more likely to build additional housing units.  This is a large part of our economy since banking heavily relies on real estate for profits.  That is largely a reason for the gigantic banking bailout while the vast majority of Americans wonder what they got for the $14 trillion in financial backstops.  The chart clearly shows one thing and that is there is virtually no demand for large unit housing complexes.  We are at record keeping demand lows even after all the bailouts.  Why?  Well most of these larger complexes are rental units and the market seems to be flush with these units:

The market is saturated with rentals.  Anyone that is both a landlord and renter will know this.  Many places are offering free HDTVs with a one year contract or even better, a few months of free rent.  Rentals always have a higher vacancy than regular homes because that is the nature of the property.  Renters are more mobile and vacancies are just part of the game.  But the current vacancy rate at nearly 10 percent is putting downward pressure on rent prices.  In fact, the BLS uses an owner’s equivalent of rent and this has been falling:

The interesting thing about the BLS data is that it understated the housing bubble because most people during the bubble shifted to buying overpriced homes while the data series was still focused on rental equivalents.  Now, with such a high rate in rental vacancies and large numbers of foreclosures the BLS is adjusting quickly to the downside and making it look like we are having massive deflation since housing makes up over 30 percent of the BLS CPI measure.  Why is this important?  This factors into many things including the cost of living adjustments many receive.

So all this adds into the fact that commercial real estate has very little pricing power in today’s market.  So what are the too big to fail banks doing?  They are laying the problem off on the public.  This was seen when Morgan Stanley simply walked away from the debt obligation in a San Francisco CRE deal:

“(WSJ) So we’ve discussed the ethics of individual borrowers walking away from their mortgages. (Some say we’ve over-discussed it.) If it’s immoral, as some would say, for a borrower to walk away their mortgage, is it any different for a bank?

Morgan Stanley is doing just that. News reports on Thursday said the bank plans to give back five San Francisco office buildings to its lender-just two years after buying them at the top of the market.

“This isn’t a default or foreclosure situation,” spokeswoman Alyson Barnes told Bloomberg News. “We are going to give them the properties to get out of the loan obligation.”

Sound familiar?

Morgan Stanley bought the buildings, along with five others, in San Francisco’s financial district as part of a $2.5 billion purchase from Blackstone Group in May 2007. The buildings were formerly owned by billionaire investor Sam Zell’s Equity Office Properties and acquired by Blackstone in its $39 billion buyout of the real estate firm earlier that year, Bloomberg reports. One analyst estimates that the buildings are now worth half of what Morgan Stanley paid.”

Now this is fascinating coming from an industry leader who has had its champion in the U.S. government moralizing that people shouldn’t walk away from their debt obligations.  The CRE market is in for a long and troubled road ahead.  Right now much of the data on retail sales is being championed as great but we are comparing it to data that was down in the abyss:

When you hear of those wonderful year over year gains we are going back to early 2009 when the economy was flying off a cliff.  So sure, things are up but what are we comparing it to?

The Federal Reserve has over $2 trillion in questionable assets that they are fighting to keep from an audit.  It is likely many loans in their portfolio are now commercial loans.  The fact that vacancy rates are so high and the employment situation is still dismal, where will the demand come from?  If anything, the best we can hope for is that current spaces get leased out and we start reaching more equilibrium levels of vacancies.  But we are so far away from even that.

What isn’t happening in the CRE market is very telling.  2010 is expected to bring much pain in this market and so far, we have had very little evidence pointing to any upsurge in this market.   And with $3 trillion at stake, any small movements mean big bucks.