I
I'm happy with the move. Everything is on a good path now.
Not if you're invested in commercial real estate!
excerpt summary
The risks of U.S. commercial banks being overexposed to commercial real estate (CRE) have intensified as the global pandemic upended long-held economic assumptions of perpetually subdued inflation, low interest rates, and in-office work.
*U.S. banks face a reckoning: Over the next two years,
more than $1 trillion in commercial real estate (CRE) loans will come due,
according to The Conference Board calculations using MSCI Real Assets data. Institutions with the most concentrated exposures, insufficient capital cushions, and limited lifelines from larger institutions or regulators face significant losses.
The damage could metastasize into a full-blown financial crisis if scores or even hundreds of small- and midsize commercial banks fail simultaneously.
THE HEART OF THE PROBLEM
Hundreds of banks hold an outsized amount of CRE loans on their books relative to capital. Small banks (assets of $100 million to $1 billion) and midsize banks (assets of $1 billion to $10 billion) have CRE loan values
far exceeding risk-based capital levels at 158% and 228%, respectively, according to The Conference Board calculations using FDIC Institutional Financial Reports data. This is compared to 142% for large banks (assets of $10 billion to $250 billion) and 56% for the largest banks (assets greater than $250 billion). The smallest banks (assets less than $100 million) issue few of such loans.
As CRE property values fall and the debt service on associated loans accumulates, borrowers are becoming delinquent or defaulting. The portion of these loans that are nonperforming more than doubled — from 0.54% to 1.25% — over the six quarters from the Q3 2022 cycle low, according to data compiled from BankRegData.com and the FDIC. Compare this with the just 0.87% rate six quarters after the cycle low, in the second quarter of 2006, which preceded the 2008–09 Great Recession.
*Editor's note... when the commercial real-estate market collapses, it will make the 2008 housing bust look like a weekend Toga party!