The Biggest Farce in the History of Retail
By Porter Stansberry
A recent Wall Street Journal article warned about the big problems developing in commercial real estate, especially for shopping centers.
Overall, the default rate on commercial real estate loans that have been packaged into securities (about $400 billion of debt) has now breached the critical 5% threshold. The default rate on these securities is 5.6%. That means, going forward, it's going to be a lot harder for commercial real estate firms to move risky mortgages off their books.
Research firm Morningstar now predicts that 40% of commercial-mortgage-backed securities loans maturing next year won't be paid off.
If that's anywhere close to accurate, the entire market for commercial real estate lending will be virtually shut down, making it almost impossible to "roll" even relatively safe mortgages forward. This is a huge risk to real estate companies.
And there's more bad news...
Under the Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul, a series of new rules will go into effect on Christmas Eve. These new rules require issuers of commercial mortgage-backed securities to retain 5% of the securities they package and sell.
That means these firms' balance sheets will take on even more stress, as they won't be able to sell all of their loans. Tad Philipp, director of commercial real estate research at ratings agency Moody's, told the Wall Street Journal: "You couldn't have planned worse timing."
Let me tell you the best part about this bad news. Most of the commercial real estate loans that are going bad are loans that were made in 2006 and 2007 and then packaged into securities.
Source: Daily Crux