Extend and pretend kicks into high gear. For example, the $975 million mortgage on a San Francisco office tower.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
The portion of the $4.7 trillion in US commercial real estate debt that will come due this year – and in theory must be paid off through a sale, refinanced, or extended to avoid default – has ballooned from $659 billion to $929 billion, the Mortgage Bankers Association said today.
The reason the loan maturities ballooned in 2024 from the initial figure of $659 billion to $929 billion today is that many loans that matured in 2023 and were supposed to be paid off in 2023, were in fact not paid off.
Instead, the loans have been modified and extended into 2024 and others were extended further into the future, the MBA said in its report today. The dollar amounts reflect the unpaid principal balance as of December 31, 2023.
Lenders and landlords – those landlords that want to keep the property rather than walking away from it – are dealing with this situation each by holding a gun to the other’s head to make a deal, as we’ll see in a moment. Results may vary.
The new figures for maturities in 2024 by investor type, according to the MBA today:
- $28 billion: government-backed mortgages (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA, and Ginnie Mae) on multifamily and health-care buildings
- $59 billion: held by life insurance companies.
- $441 billion: held by banks, including foreign banks around the world that have now started to confess to their loan losses on US CRE. The MBA did not say what portion was held by US banks, and what portion was held by foreign banks.
- $234 billion: in commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS), collateralized loan obligations (CLOs), and other asset-backed securities (ABS)
- $168 billion: held by other credit companies of all types, including mortgage REITs, PE firms, and private-credit providers.
Maturities in 2024 by CRE type:
- 12% of loans backed by multifamily properties
- 17% of loans backed by retail properties
- 18% of loans backed by healthcare properties
- 25% of loans backed by office properties
- 27% of loans backed by industrial properties
- 38% of loans backed by lodging properties.
Landlords and lenders hold a gun to each other’s head.
For example, on February 6, 2024, a $975 million loan on a 1.58 million square-foot One Market Plaza office tower in San Francisco matured. In January, credit-rating agency KBRA warned that the loan faced “imminent maturity default.”
The tower, owned by a joint-venture of Blackstone and Paramount Group, was built in the 1970s and renovated in 2016. It was refinanced in 2017 with an interest-only mortgage of $975 million, which was then securitized into a single-asset CMBS (OMPT 2017-1 MKT) and sold to investors, including a variety of bond funds.
Google, which is on an aggressive push to reduce its office footprint, is the largest tenant in the building, with 21.6% of the space; the lease expires in 2025. Visa is the second-largest tenant with 10.2% of the space; the lease expires in 2026.
According to Trepp, which tracks CMBS, the tower had an occupancy rate of 96% as of September 2023. So that was good. But the biggest leases are set to expire this year and next year, and companies have used lease expiration as an opportunity to cut their footprint.
San Francisco is the worst among major office markets, with an availability rate of 36.7%; Dallas is in second place, with an availability rate of 30%. Atlanta and Houston follow closely behind. So when a loan matures on an office tower in San Francisco, and if the landlord defaults, the lender ends up with the tower and has to sell it at huge loss.
That loss that lenders take when selling the property in the current environment is the gun the landlord holds to the lender’s head. Everyone knows Blackstone is serious; it already got lenders stuck with some properties, including, as we discussed here, an office tower in Manhattan.
And the lender can take the building away from the landlord, which is the gun that the lender holds to the landlord’s head. That gun is loaded with blanks, if the landlord doesn’t want to keep the property. But if they do want to keep the property, that gun works.
Extend and pretend.
So the Blackstone-Paramount joint-venture and the special servicer representing the CMBS holders sat down and made a deal in January, ahead of the loan expiration, and last week, they announced the details of their deal: the mortgage was modified and extended.
- The joint venture agreed to pay down by $125 million the existing $975 million loan and bring it to $850 million.
- This modified loan has been extended for three years to February 2027, with an option to extend it for another year.
- The existing loan’s fixed interest rate of 4.03% was raised to 4.08% for the modified loan.
So the landlord got a huge deal in terms of the interest rate (4.08%, fixed for three years), which is below the three-year Treasury yield (currently 4.26%), and far below current CRE mortgage rates. And they got a huge deal by not having to get a new loan, which would have been nearly impossible, and much more expensive.
The CMBS holders got a deal because the loan was paid down by $125 million, thus reducing their exposure and potential loss, and because they didn’t end up with an older office tower that they would have to sell in the worst office market in the US, and take massive losses.
Now both parties pray that in three years office CRE is a changed world with full offices, low availability rates, higher rents, and much lower interest rates. And if that’s not the case, it’ll start all over again. But until then, extend and pretend averted massive losses for both parties.
That’s how the better office properties will be dealt with: Extend and pretend in the hope for better times. Weaker office properties – where extend and pretend cannot be worked out – will go back to the lenders, and they get to sort out the fate of those properties at massive loss ratios.
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At a trillion dollars, I feel some kind of Federal Reserve “cash me off” window opening up for the Apex Parasites (Wall Street Bankers).
The Fed is only worried about the US banking system. And the exposure of the huge US banking system to CRE isn’t that big (as spelled out in this and prior articles). The Fed doesn’t care about foreign banks, and they’re heavily exposed to US CRE, and the Fed doesn’t care about investors, and they’re the most exposed to US CRE, and the Fed is fine with them losing their shirts. You see, these CRE loans are spread far and wide around the globe.
https://wolfstreet.com/2024/02/12/even-banks-in-asia-pacific-apac-on-the-hook-for-us-office-cre-fitch/
https://wolfstreet.com/2024/02/05/us-office-cre-mess-is-spread-far-and-wide-across-investors-banks-around-the-globe-us-banks-eat-only-a-portion-of-the-losses/
Yeah… go America, stick those losses elsewhere. Wonder what happens when some bank in Europe or elsewhere suddenly ends up with jingle mail. Do they sell it cheap.
Somewhere someone might make out like a bandit. But that’s assuming things go back to normal. I don’t think it will go back to normal. WFH won’t be forever tolerated, but neither will a larger footprint around Human Resources.
WFH was only ever a city or immediately-city-adjacent phenomenon.
Evidence?
2023 USA Auto mileage eclipsed the prior 2019 peak.
2023 Public Transit use was still 40+% lower than late 2010s peaks in most major USA cities.
Expect a combination of AI and offshoring to wipe out a goodly number of the jobs held by WFH holdouts.
Normal? What’s that? Oh, a couple decades ago, heard it was a “thing” then.
(A stab at dark humor).
Yeah, they’re fine with it until someone in Congress comes up with a sob story about how it’ll do something horrible
I hope that is true.
For “not caring” about foreign banks, the Fed has certainly provided cheap funding via the discount window for numerous foreign banks. Especially after the Great Financial Fraud of 2008/2009.
No, the Fed does not provide funding to foreign banks. It provides funding to US federal- or state-chartered banks that are regulated by US regulators; but it doesn’t matter who owns the US bank. If a foreign company owns the US-chartered bank, the US-charted bank can obtain funding at the discount window.
Wolf, everything the fed does manifest itself in the stock market one way or the other. From unintended liquidity injections, to backstops. Where good is bad, and bad is good. Back in the day the fed surely cared about AIG and its extensive array of CDS and GM, and mbs, cmbs, when the shtf. So to say this fed only cares about the banking system could be construed as a bit disingenuous if history attempts to repeat itself in my humble worthless opinion. perhaps I confuse the PPT with the fed….
That’s your interpretation of the Fed, to support your own fantasies?
AIG was the sucker on the other side of GS and JPM on the SYNTHETIC CDS and other fantasy football league ‘products’, so it was GS and JPM whose bets were made good.
Anyone else shocked that 38% due in 2024 is lodging?
That made me go ‘huh’ upoj reading it.
Probably a good thing tho – with consumer spending still at drunken sailor levels, hotels should be solidly booked, ergo they have cashflow to keep paying off these loans.
Hotel rates in my area are WAY up from pre-Covid days. Like double or more.
And as for “Fed doesn’t care about foreign banks,” I seem to remember enormous swap lines the Fed set up with supposedly foreign nations that the Fed set up “in times of crisis” – presumably in order to keep the rotted-out US dollar world-dominion stumbling on for a few more years.
In cascade failures, all the latent/obscured/hidden interlinkages/relationships/desperate options suddenly start to reveal themselves…which is sorta the point of this article.
I mean, last year, all the people saying “no big deal, nothing to see here” were apparently citing “problemmatic” loan totals that, it turns out – a few metaphorical minutes later – were understated by a mere…41% (*per this article*).
Maybe next year, more buried toxic waste will boost the understatement to 81%…
But I’m sure DC “has a plan”…sure to raise the number to 441% by 2027…
That is precisely how gutshot economies stumble to their lingering death.
1. you misunderstand what swap lines are, and then you build a crazy theory on your misunderstanding? Swap lines with other central banks provide those central banks with dollar-cash so that they can deal with issues when their banks face runs or funding issues denominated in dollars. They’re currency swap lines — dollars in exchange for foreign currency, with other central banks.
2. You misunderstand what the 41% increase in the maturities in 2024 is (RTGDFA, it’s explained in detail what this is), and then build another crazy theory on your misunderstanding? The “loan totals” were not “understated.” Loans that were supposed to be paid off in 2023, where not paid off but were extended, and those maturities that were extended by one year moved into 2024, which caused those 2024 maturities to rise by 41%. The totals of CRE loans barely ticked up.
“Hotel rates in my area are WAY up from pre-Covid days. Like double or more.”
We are revenge travelers and I’ve about given up on using hotels anymore. The prices are indeed outrageous now. I’m almost exclusively Airbnb. This is an international situation, not just US.
Project Homekey will buy up all the California defaults… uhh, I mean properties, probably at full price. It will certainly be a better expansion of the $68 billion dollar deficit than the High Speed Rail initialtive.
Project Homekey smells like scheme to bail out landlords. The idea is for landlords to unload undesirable properties onto the public/taxpayer, under the guise of the public funding affordable housing . The landlords will use the sales proceeds to keep their other underwater projects afloat.
Here is a reference:
“Project Homekey is program by the state of California that provides local government agencies with funds to purchase and rehabilitate housing – including hotels, motels, vacant apartment buildings and other properties – and convert them into permanent, long-term housing for people experiencing or at risk of homelessness.
Governor Gavin Newsom on June 30, 2020, announced the launch of Project Homekey to protect vulnerable Californians from the COVID-19 pandemic. The governor has made funding available for counties to collaborate with the state to acquire and rehabilitate various housing options and to provide supportive services.
Funding comes from the state’s allocation of federal Coronavirus Aid Relief Funds and the state’s General Fund.”
https://www.hcd.ca.gov/grants-and-funding/homekey
The same type thing is going on in cities around the country, e.g. Seattle.
The huge budget deficit in California — if it continues — is going to end some of these programs.
That said, buying old rundown motels and hotels and converting them into housing for the homeless is a good thing. That’s an idea that is working.
Yea, public housing has always worked out great. /s
…and the “homeless” will simply destroy them and become homeless.
Umm….google ain’t goin’ back to the office. Even the bad devs ain’t goin’ back. Should be “interesting.”
They ain’t goin’ back – because those positions are being steadily eliminated by Google and others.
The wisdom of moving to a Superstar City to take a tech job in the 2020s will soon bear more than a passing resemblance to that of moving to Pittsburgh in the 1970s to take a steel job.
You might want to take a look at the employment numbers.
As Wolf has pointed out, they make big announcements of layoffs and then hire even more employees.
Google’s headcount is increasing.
Just as the announced tech layoffs are global, so is new hiring. I have no idea where Google’s new employees are located, but they’re probably not all at HQ/California.
The more likely thing is US-based remote workers getting replaced by India-based remote workers.
It has been 20 years since the SF based commercial mortgage firm I worked for hired a company in India to do all our data entry and basic underwriting. I would often stay late and talk to them as they were starting their workday. Many of the guys working for us went to undergrad at IIT and had MBAs from US business schools. They were making a little over $30K USD but that was enough to own a home in India with a cook and cleaning person. I expect more “white collar” jobs to continue to leave the US.
One of our offices tried the outsourcing thing a few years back with remote workers based in India. Just a complete disaster. Besides the time-zone and cultural differences, the tide of fake degrees and credentials was so bad we had no idea who actually had the skills put up on their resumes. Even their own supervisors over there couldn’t tell and even many of them became managers through nepotism. There were also frustrating problems with infrastructure with the Indian back-offices, power kept going out and security breaches. And huge turnover and miscommunicating, and tardiness. India is still so severely overpopulated that even the most punctual workers there would often have to practically fight to get a train to their offices.
Was such a mess that the exec who planned the whole idea of offshoring to India got canned, and the office brought back most who’d been laid off in the US. But having to pay even more since many were then contractors. They were WFH even then before the pandemic but as tele-work far more productive and reliable than the India office, and usually more productive even than most in-office workers–less fatigue from long commutes, could jump right into work and not deal with irritations from parking or water-cooler distractions. The commute really is the main factor why WFH is still expanding, did some studies and beyond a very short commuting (getting harder due to the housing bubble pushing Americans out of cities), it’s huge drain on productivity and health and really messes up morale. And then also the fact the US birth rate is underwater right now–even worse when look at just American-born adults in skilled jobs–and roads already have horrible traffic, and even many of the biggest return to office enthusiasts are backing way off.
Amen. Laborers have more power as the need numbers of younger, tax-paying generations decline while the US government massive liabilities increase, e.g. due to COLAs. It will be a self inflicted wound, but countries like Italy, China, Germany, etc., will suffer much more. Doubt AI can alter things enough for the baby boomers! Not enough workers will limit US reindustrialization plans.
“That’s how the better office properties will be dealt with: Extend and pretend in the hope for better times.”
And if they don’t come, then “doom loop” sets in?
Ehh I just don’t think CRE will spark the kind of contagion that residential did in 08.
Sure bond holders will be taken to the cleaners, but that’s their problem.
It may become everyone’s problem if enough insurance companies and pension funds take a hard kick to the nuts.
I trust the Fed has acronyms ready to deal with such a crisis.
Not really. If pension funds fail they have the PBGC to cover them (funded by fees charged to pension funds) and if insurance companies fail they have state guaranty fund associations to cover policyholders (funded by fees charged to insurance companies).
The PBGC does not cover state/municipal pensions, which these days are the vast majority of pensions.
Fascinating power dynamics at play here.
I’d gamble most lenders don’t want to “repo” these office towers and then have to deal with them… but they don’t want the landlords to know that & give up hand in the negotiations.
Btw Wolf, minor typo in the link the Manhattan tower article: the space directly before the word ‘an’ is also URL’d, which makes it look a bit off.
Most regional banks hold the majority of CRE that is originated by them. Granted, the regionals are not big players in large financings, they mostly invest (lend) to small balance and middle market borrowers. I know from direct discussions with several small regional bank credit managers that these smaller banks have battened down the hatches, and they are lending very selectively. It’s premature to say whether reduced liquidity in the small balance and middle market arenas will impact the greater CRE market and the economy, but it is not a good sign.
So there is no price discovery. What is a safe LTV and DSCR? Did they give you an answer? Relationship based lending like old times, meaning they are scared shitless.
I am looking for signs and praying to the Four Winds for guidance. I am seeing a straight razor haircut coming soon in the small and middle.
The old axiom: “He who panics first, panics best.”
I already saw a sign last week, but the broker was trying to hide it with a new listing. I might call him out on it, if he calls again. Feels like, coffee is for closers moment lately since the whole RE industry has been drunk with QE and ZIRP for some many years. Hard people for hard times will clear this crap out. Good luck.
“He who panics first, panics best.”
You can either be on the train…or under it.
Lending criteria for conventional small balance CRE over the past decade has generally been around 65% LTV with a >1.25 DSCR (multifamily and SBA not included). Although many banks are claiming to be lending, in reality they have become very selective. Lower LTVs closer to 55% with 1.35+ DSCR seems to be where the market is at the moment. Many of the smaller regionals have also cut back on max loan size as well.
CRE Lending has tightened up dramatically.
“The ‘sweet’ fruits of an inflation-generated prosperity were spoiled by the subsequent deflation that entailed a severe shrinkage of inflated common stock and real estate values, too.
— Malchior Palyi, The Twilight of Gold, 1972
Accurately relayed description of the 1930’s investment markets.
Remains to be seen how a “severe shrinkage” episode plays out in the 2020’s.
Cue George Castanza :)
I remember reading maybe 20 or 30 years ago that massive debt owed by Japanese industrial corporations was being swept under the carpet by keeping interest rates low and perhaps the odd chant in a well groomed garden. In this way the myriad of small industrial firms that had borrowed money for tools and equipment could be kept going rather than collapsing and bringing the whole economy down with them. I’m not sure what lessons, if any, can be learned from this experience.
given that a lot of last minute extends and pretends pushed the maturity cliff from $659bn to$929bn shows that (1) the Fed was “GOOD” at setting expectations that they’d pivot back to low rates? Surely the “lodging (hotels)” and “multi-family (residences)” and “healthcare” CRE dont’ have a covid vacancy problem still running (unlike offices)! It has to be the idea of hte Fed pivot!?
Retail has been a terrible CRE sector for many years, with massive losses, and the Fed didn’t give a fig. Lodging was terrible for years about a decade ago, and the Fed didn’t mind. As has office. As long as they don’t take down the banking system, the Fed is fine with this stuff. Multifamily is still in pretty decent shape overall, in terms of delinquencies.
much much appreciated! Thank you for the data!
‘The joint venture agreed to pay down by $125 million the existing $975 million loan and bring it to $850 million.
This modified loan has been extended for three years to February 2027, with an option to extend it for another year.
The existing loan’s fixed interest rate of 4.03% was raised to 4.08% for the modified loan.’
The first 2 are substantive, the third is kind of laughable. Oh wow we squeezed out an extra .05 of a percent! Obviously a sop to someone’s pride. It would be fun to listen to the well- lubricated showdown that led to this bone being thrown in:
‘Listen mofo, you got the 125, we each get three years to live, how come you squeezing my …..’
‘Cuz rates gone up mofo, I need to say I got something’
Ok ok., 05. Best I can do. You wanna put this pig on today’s market, just say no.
Deal. .05 and you catch tonite;s entertainment.
The above is of course, imaginary.
LOL, that’s about how these things get worked out.
You still have to have the $ to work the deal out.
The One Market modification seems like a pretty good deal for the lenders.
.0403 * 975M = 39.3M/year interest
.0408 * 850M = 34.7M/year interest
That is a difference of 4.6M/year. Assuming the full term plus extension, the landlord essentially paid $125M for a 3.2% interest rate buydown. He evidently wanted to keep the property badly enough and was not able or willing to refinance 975M principal at 7.2% or less. Cocktail napkin math. This does not seem like a particularly good deal for the landlord to me.
Wouldn’t be surprised if at some point telework doesn’t come back simply to allow companies to have employees quit rather than the cost of firing. Some risks come with that but too many have changed their lives and those that have choice might move on. I work in state government where lots of people aren’t retiring because other than being tethered they work a few hours a day at best and the 2% just keep getting added on. I strongly support telework but it is ripe for abuse.
Glen: “I strongly support telework but it is ripe for abuse.”
From my perspective as a former Govt employee, the phrase is “rife with abuse.”
The issue is that longer that telework grabs hold, the more and more office leases up for renewal are caught up in the process. Once a company reduces its floor space at a lease renewal point, it’s not likely to commit to a subsequent multi-year lease obligation so they can bring in more employees to the office.
Yeah the fact even Google is moving away from office occupancy and towards more tele-work shows this is only going to pick up speed. We looked at some old expense reports and it’s amazing how terrible expensive office occupancy is even before covid and the CRE bubble. It’s a huge hit to profitability and if company can find a way, WFH is a lot better for the corporate bottom-line as much for workers.
It isn’t just the overhead and rent for the office building itself, it’s also the utilities and insurance (passed on to any companies using the building). Parking is a much more massive headache and expense than usually understood, and very hard to manage for a large staff. Commutes beyond around half-hour turn out to really plunge productivity (WFH also helps reduce the traffic), working parents are rushing out to pick up kids from school or day-care and sick workers get everyone else sick in closed spaces causing further hits. And now the weather is getting worse too, those floods in California, tornadoes and snowstorms hit CRE too, and much harder than before. The CRE real estate bubble is even worse and makes even less sense than the also ridiculous residential home price bubble, even before the pandemic there were already clear signs it wasn’t a good investment and businesses were going to do a lot to cut costs there.
In regard to U.S. Banks. In the world of extend and pretend doesn’t there still exist the reality of having these under collateralized loans having to set up reserves for these losses? If so, that bookkeeping transfer could have some impact. Does mark to market not exist at all?
1. If the loan is performing and if the bank expects it to continue to perform, the bank doesn’t have to increase its loan loss reserve for it.
2. Banks generically increase their loan loss reserves for potential losses when the economy gets tougher, or when a sector like CRE runs into trouble, or when their loan book gets bigger, such as through acquisitions. Increasing loan loss reserves is standard practice, and not the end of the world.
Interesting, so these these large loan loss provisions the banks have been reporting are strictly loans with late payments?
No, re-read my paragraph #2. Note the word “generically” and the other factors.
The more heavily they extend forbearance, the more likely it ends in bank runs.
Do bond funds have a large stake?
They’ll probably just convert many of them to residential. I wouldn’t want to be a condo owner now with all this converted inventory coming online over the next several years. There will be a massive glut of residential condo units. Get out and buy a single family house near town before it’s too late.
Indeed, great time to buy!
Its very expensive to convert an office building to residential.
Still far cheaper (1/2-1/3 less) than building a new residential condo from scratch. But most importantly, much faster. An office to residential conversion can take under a year while new ground up condo projects take over 4 years.
I read a report of all the proposed commercial buildings to condo conversions and it is pretty big. That will put somewhat of a floor under commercial real estate that is structurally convertible. I have not idea what this price floor is because the building has to sell at a discount that includes the cost to convert.
If lodging is even worse than CRE, imagine the AirBnB component in ‘public real estate’ and how its truly faring?
I know people talk about Short Term Rentals (STR) a lot and how it will crash and effect house prices. From what i can find, there are maybe 2.5 million STR in the US? Sure, maybe in a bubble in vacation areas but most STRs were seeing good cash flow when there were around 1.5 million units. That makes me think at the most, you would see 1 million units hit the market in a downturn. Not enough to move the needle except in cities of high concentration of AIRBNBs. Specifically, vacation areas?
CPI up this morning.
Government borrowing, debt continue to grow.
Everybody who wants a job and is capable of doing anything is working and buying things and supporting prices.
Risk worldwide from war, pollution, and economic inequality continued to grow.
The Fed will support jobs first.
Anybody really think interest rates will fall anytime soon, or in a controlled fashion when they do?
Wouldn’t be surprised if the Fed ended up raising .25 sometime in the next 3-6 months.
Interest rates which are primarily set by bonds rose very significantly today as the price gouging by corporations set new highs.
As a side note, if they haven’t already done so, every owner of CRE in these markets should immediately appeal their property tax assessment with the county assessor. I would imagine some of these appraisals are extremely ugly.
Wall Street is experiencing the St. Valentines Day massacre today, no doubt because the Fed didn’t and isn’t going to pivot!!!
The pivot-mongers just don’t ever seem to get it. JPow and the Fed were disinclined to pivot even before this and “higher for longer” is now official policy–that December speech did nothing to change that, and beyond just the short term rates, QT is picking up speed. The Fed never guaranteed rate cuts, just said it was an option depends on how inflation runs in 2024. But the concern isn’t just the still untamed inflation, it’s that it’s bad in the worst areas of the economy where Americans really can’t tolerate higher prices without a lot of financial pain. Necessities like housing and food, where the Fed’s been especially concerned. And now the pivot-mongers once again shown they’ve totally misunderstood Powell, and have never had the slightest idea of the Fed’s priorities or why higher for longer became policy in the first place.
Dow falls 700 points after hotter-than-expected inflation data…
Wolf,
Do cover other (i.e. non-RE) Corporate Debt?
I remember 5-6 years ago lots of talk about the mountains of Corporate Debt that was going to be a problem as Zombie companies wouldn’t be able to refinance come 2022-2024, I’m guessing that can got kicked down the road during the pandemic rate plummet?
Howdy Lone Wolf. Sorry for posting here…….
Getting very excited for your CPI article today.
I will wait as patiently as I can…
THANKS
Me too DFB.
Services inflation still looks red hot.
Death of the construction crane: Skyscraper-building equipment touted as sign of thriving economy VANISHES from NYC and Chicago skyline as office values tank
And now. What´s about on this date…. Inflation: Consumer prices rise 3.1% in January, defying forecasts for a faster slowdown
Hot off the press:
Beneath the Skin of CPI Inflation, January: Powell’s Gonna Have a Cow when he Sees the Spike in “Core Services” Inflation
But that’s how inflation is, once out of the bottle: It serves up nasty surprises.
https://wolfstreet.com/2024/02/13/beneath-the-skin-of-cpi-inflation-january-powells-gonna-have-a-cow-when-he-sees-the-spike-in-core-services-inflation/
CPI higher than expected today. But interesting to me is the price of commodities are still dropping.
Commodity ETFs dropped as inflation was dropping. One could say they led. But now they are not going up and are flat or still going down.
Energy prices for Nat Gas and Solar are still dropping. Corn, Soybeans, Silver, Copper charts all look technically bearish.
Without looking, I guess service inflation is still services. FOMO and YOLO is still very strong. Insurance costs are still playing catch-up. Cruise line bookings are solid going forward. Hotel stocks have been on fire. Pro athletes and thus ticket prices are seeing big increase. Concert tickets are crazy high. $500+ for Taylor swift. U2 is $700+, Rolling Stone Concert are going for $700+. Biance is $500+. LOL….Katy Perry is
low $100s. Average hourly wage is $26/hour. So pretty much 27 hours of work (3.5 days) before taxes to go to a concert.
Let’s see if they keep tapping into their HELOCs.
ru82,
Market robots buy momentum because that is easy to program and they are so fast. Commodities and value are out of style most of the time.
David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital, one of the rare value investors left (though highly successful), talked about momentum and value in an interview with Ritholtz the other day.
The relatively recent CECL allowance approach should have made Bank reserves more business cycle adjusted than pre-CECL.
It was interesting that pre-CECL allowance was generally lagging in usefulness. Your general reserve was lowest right before a downturn and too high coming out of a downturn.
Seems that is a bit a bad deal for the creditors: The interest rate for the loan is marginally lower, and the the creditor receive only a payback of 125 million US-Dollars, in light that this is business based on the principle hope.
This would be a challenge for the debtors/landlords to find new companies for the vacant spaces in exchange for higher monthly rent payments.
Thanks for the insight on the RE deal Wolf.
I’m an Indy advisor. I just had my research folks check. This CMBS is trading at 91 and …no surprise, is rated AAA.
For multifamily, we investors got screwed by Covid policies that prohibited evictions even of non-paying tenants given funds to pay expenses; depending on the State.
Who will invest in Multifamily again if many of these are resulting in taking back projects with 100% loss of principal?