Newmark To Take $60B In Signature Bank Loans To Market

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. plans to hire real estate services giant Newmark to sell about $60B in loans the failed Signature Bank had on its books, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing anonymous sources.

More than half of the total is commercial real estate loans, and such an influx of assets for sale will probably have a ripple effect on loan valuations not only in New York but nationwide as buyers look for deals.

Specifically, a sale of this magnitude will probably help lower prices for commercial real estate loans, the WSJ reports. Even as downward pressure has come to bear on commercial loans, especially those associated with office properties, banks have been slow to mark down their valuations.

“It will provide a data point for everyone in the market trying to gauge where values are,” Tripp Managing Director Matthew Anderson told the publication.

Even multifamily-associated loans might feel the pinch, as buyers look for discounts among the Signature holdings, but also as rents decline nationwide.

Rents fell month-over-month 0.25% from January to February, marking the fifth monthly decline in the last six months, according to listings site Rent.com. In greater New York, the slide has been even more pronounced, with rents down 2.2% from January to February.

The Signature loans will probably be structured into pools for sale, but the size of the loan pools isn't clear, Commercial Observer reports.

Not long after Signature failed earlier this month due to a run on deposits, the FDIC found a buyer, New York Community Bancorp subsidiary Flagstar Bank, for all of its deposits, but not its commercial real estate loan portfolio.

New York-based Signature's loans are mostly concentrated in New York-area multifamily and office assets, whose values have generally fallen since the onset of the pandemic and the enactment of restrictive rent regulations in 2019.