Another Great Recession might be on point. The mainstream business media picked up the same theme on Thursday and Friday, as the Dow lost ground. There will be some severe economic consequences from the coronavirus. Even if COVID-19 never gets out of control in the U.S., hundreds of thousands of small businesses in China are…
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Now that I have mentioned it, you will start to hear the term, Modern Monetary Theory, all of time. The commentators use it a lot on Bloomberg, CNBC, and Fox Business. The financial commentators will often just use the acronym, “MMT”. According to Wikipedia, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is a macroeconomic framework that says monetarily…
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Why do almost all gas stations now have convenience stores? Answer: A convenience store is an extra profit center. The gas pumps pull in the customers, and while they are waiting for their tanks to fill, the convenience store sell them sodas, snacks, lotto tickets, and hot dogs. Right now your real estate web site…
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This is going to surprise you, but commercial banks, credit unions, and federal savings banks (the old S&L’s with a Federal charter) all quote pretty much the exact same interest rates and terms on commercial real estate loans. This is true for huge commercial banks in Los Angeles and for little credit unions in Maine.…
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Last week I blogged on the problems associated with LIBOR. It is abundantly clear that something needs to be done to replace the LIBOR index as a measure of market interest rates. I pointed out that $350 trillion in financial instruments worldwide are currently tied to LIBOR. Regardless of which index the authorities end up…
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Some more green shoots are visible as the bridge lenders are starting originations also. The warehouse lending market (big banks lending to debt funds) has started up again, with more cautious leverage. The warehouse lenders will also monitor loan collateral more closely. The difference between a commercial mortgage banker and a commercial mortgage banker is…
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The Coronavirus Crisis is now the fourth commercial real estate crash that I have experienced in my forty years of running our family commercial mortgage company, Blackburne & Sons. They seem to happen about once every twelve years. Each time commercial real estate fell by exactly 45%. To those of you who are commercial loan…
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Conduit loans, also known as CMBS loans, enjoy a fixed rate for a whopping ten years. Unlike a fixed-rate commercial loan from a bank, there is no rate readjustment after five years. The rate is fixed for the entire ten years. And with ten-year Treasuries at just 0.79%, there has never been a better time in…
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George Smith Partners recently released a tombstone about a commercial loan closing that used a financial term of which I had never heard: “George Smith Partners arranged $23,750,000 in bridge financing for the refinance of a 229-key, full-service hotel located in Downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota… The Property, built in 1986, underwent a PIP in 2017.” What…
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When a bank makes a commercial construction loan, it is certainly not going to take all of the risk. A bank will usually require that the developer cover at least 20% to 30% of the total project cost – land cost, hard costs, soft costs, and a contingency reserve equal to 5% of the hard…
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