News
RUINING CMBS'S REP
October 27, 2011
| CMBS is not dead; it's just in hiding (like Elvis, but we've already said too much). At Bisnow's Baltimore Capital Markets summityesterday, panelists pointed out that its 6.5% rates are in line with historical rates; it's just that the 150 bp spread over Treasuries is making CMBS look bad. |
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| Almost 200 joined us at the Hilton for a leisurely chat about debt and equity. More on that in continued coverage next week. |
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| But first, keynote Morris Segall of SPG Trend Advisors says consumption and manufacturing are strong enough to stave off a recession at least through the end of the year. However, September?s jump in auto, furniture, and appliance purchases may have come only because people had put off such purchases for so long. (You hadn't noticed the people riding to work on old recliners while eating room-temperature sandwiches?) The auto fleet, for example, is an average of seven to nine years old. (How old is that, Morris? Old on a historical basis, he says.) Broader term, though, high unemployment and a weak recovery have put a horse collar on consumer income: Disposable income from January through August grew 2.5%, compared to an annualized rate of 5.6% from '02 to '07. |
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| Where is business spending going then? To buying up other businesses. Morris showed this slide, which used a pretty pink to show leveraged buyouts towering over expansion. In fact, he says clients told him in early spring that their clients were preemptively cutting back on spending even before the most recent economic woes surfaced in the summer. Sure, the economy is growing by 2 to 2.5% as estimated in Q3, Morris says, but we should be seeing 3 to 4% at this point in the recovery. |
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| Among the attendees, we snapped Columbia National Real Estate Finance managing director Tim Dell (flanked by Trout Management principal Arthur Putzel and Ballard Spahr?s Ben Kelley), who tells us that if we?d have let him finish his coffee, his eyes would have been open for this picture. He says commercial mortgage banking is fun again now that capital sources are back and actively financingincome-producing properties. |
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| Chesapeake Real Estate Group's Ed Brady tells us he dropped his phone in the Chesapeake Bay on Sunday (that beats anyone who's ever dropped theirs in the toilet, ahem). He's with First Potomac?sMichele Salvino, Chesapeake?s Rob Hooper, and First Potomac?sJeb Boland. Michele had a better week, considering she spent it inDisney World. |
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| Bronwyn LeGette (second from left) of our sponsor WorkSpacestells us the company just signed a 10-year blanket purchase agreement for $100M to furnish over 3M SF for a large government agency. That's right: It's so huge the project will take 10 years. Good thing the team has already started on the planning stage. |
