Foreclosures Surge As Some Investors Call Bottom, Others Say Pain Is Just Starting
Commercial property owners are losing their properties to their lenders at the highest rate since 2015, a sign that the chill in transaction markets could be starting to thaw.
During the second quarter, $20.5B worth of office, multifamily and other property was seized, up 13% from the first three months of the year and the highest quarterly figure in nearly a decade, according to MSCI data first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
In times of distress, such surges of foreclosure activity have historically been followed by market resets. Lenders, who don’t want the properties on their books, sell the real estate and set new comparisons for the rest of the market to adjust to.
“Lenders are more dispassionate about values and that’s a sign of a cycle moving [toward a bottom]," Matt Pestronk, co-founder of development firm Post Brothers, told the WSJ.
However, loan maturity dates creeping up indicates borrowers, especially with debt tied to office buildings, have more pain in the forecast.
More than $94B of commercial real estate debt was in distress at the end of June, with another $201B at risk, according to MSCI data reported by Bloomberg.
The growing amount of bad debt has banks preparing for battle. Deutsche Bank increased its loan loss provisions in the second quarter as its average loan-to-value of its U.S. office loan portfolio reached 81%. Blackstone Mortgage Trust slashed its dividend to allow it to deploy more capital and reduce office exposure.
Last month, ratings agency Moody’s placed six regional banks under review, with potential for a ratings downgrade, due to office and other commercial real estate exposure.
Since the onset of the pandemic, the financing motto has been “extend and pretend,” but the caution exhibited by banks signal that era may be over.
“Lenders and borrowers will be forced to ‘face the music’: In the near term, we expect further declines in appraised valuations and price indices, making loan extensions even more difficult to rationalize,” according to a report by Pimco.
