S&P: Worst Yet To Come For Commercial Real Estate Loans

Despite all the good news that you’ve been hearing about commercial real estate, we haven’t been entirely convinced. We’ve indicated that uncertainty and continued weakness in rents and occupancy are powerful enough forces to keep the commercial real estate sector in check for some time. Now S&P is out with a research paper entitled, “Industry Outlook: [...]

Bair: Bank Charge Offs Related to CRE Higher in 2010

The Chairwoman of the FDIC, Sheila Bair, indicated that the charge-offs will continue.
Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair said in a speech that regulators expect banks to report higher delinquencies and charge-off rates for commercial real estate properties in the first three months of 2010. Speaking to the Commercial Mortgage Securities Association, Bair said [...]

Jon Kanas on 2010 Bank Outlook and CRE

John Kanas, CEO of BankUnited was on CNBC providing his outlook for banks in 2010. Back in August, he was on CNBC and projected over 1,000 banks to fail over the next two years.
He was back on recently, and his thoughts on the market have remained fairly unchanged. His thoughts are that commercial real estate [...]

7 Banks Go Down Today; 2 In California

Another Friday, another few banks taken over by the FDIC. Today’s list….

First Federal Bank of California, Santa Monica, CA
Imperial Capital Bank, La Jolla, CA
Independent Bankers Bank, Springfield, IL
New South Federal Savings Bank, Irondale, AL
Citizens State Bank, New Baltimore, MI
Peoples First Community Bank, Panama City, FL
RockBridge Commercial Bank, Atlanta, GA

The assets of First Federal are being [...]

101 Wachovia Branches To Close in California

The digestion of Wachovia by Wells Fargo is underway and as part of the process, Wells Fargo will be closing 101 California branches. In addition, 65 existing Wachovia branches will be rebranded. In Santa Clara County, the three branches to be rebranded include:

Berryessa Rd and Sandstone Ln, San Jose
Stanford Shopping Center, Palo Alto
Bollinger Rd and [...]

Banks Quick to Adopt New FDIC Guidelines

WSJ is reporting that banks are being quick to adopt new FDIC guidelines which allow them to reclassify the type of debt they have on their books from performing to non-performing by meeting less stringent requirements.
The new policy statement recently issued by the FDIC recently gives banks the ability to restructure loans without hurting the [...]

PIMCO: House Prices Yet To Bottom

PIMCO’s head of mortgage bonds believes prices are going to continue to fall, particularly on the high end. As FHA loans tighten, and foreclosures begin to increase again, home prices will likely resume their fall which will continue to put pressure on household spending. The article also brings to light a statistic that the price [...]

Next Wave of Stress Tests To Focus on CRE

Many of the nation’s community and regional banks turned to commercial real estate lending during the last run up to boost profits through higher yields. Now, many of these same banks are saddled with commercial real estate debt on their books, and some banks such as Sterling Financial have 50% of their loan exposure in [...]

Failed Bank Timeline

The WSJ has a breakdown of the bank failures thus far and accompanying graphic to go along with it. Unfortunately it’s not embeddable, but you can see it by going here.

CRE Shoe Next NOT To Drop?

Retail Traffic has an article out citing economists on why commercial real estate won’t be the next shoe to drop. Certainly commercial real estate won’t have the impact that the sub-prime housing crisis had, and will be more of a bank-level problem than at the consumer-level, but credit is ultimately what is needed.
Take earnings at [...]