Time To Take The Fed’s Warning Seriously: CMBS Has “Greatest Ever Monthly Delinquency Increase”

Jon Alternative Media, Banking, Blogosphere, Economy, Fiscal Policies, Precious Metals, Real Estate, Silver

With three UK-based property funds, among them Standard Life, Aviva and M&G, all “freezing” assets in the past 2 days and suspending redemptions over fears of a swoon in UK housing prices, spreading panic shockwaves around the globe that the Brexit dominoes have come home to roost (to mix and match metaphors), it may not be a bad time time to jump across the Atlantic and look at US real-estate and in particular, commercial properties. As CMBS specialist Trepp wrote today in its weekly TreppWire commentary, the “Trepp CMBS delinquency rate moved noticeably higher in June, as the rate was pushed up by loans that reached their maturity date but were not paid off.” It was the fourth straight month that the rate has crept higher following two large decreases in January and February. The delinquency rate for US commercial real estate loans in CMBS is now 4.60%, an increase of 25 basis points from April.
This is in line with recent warnings from the Fed which just two weeks ago cautioned not only about another stock bubble when on June 21 it said that “forward price-to-earnings ratios for equities have increased to a level well above their median of the past three decades” but again warned that commercial real estate remains the most troubled sector: “valuation pressures have remained notable in the commercial real estate sector, to which some small banks have substantial exposures.” This includes not just bricks and mortar malls, which are losing bankrupt retail tenants by the hour, but also the collapse in the shale sector. It also includes a sudden spike in vacant office space.
Over the weekend, the Fed’s warning was validated not just by Trepp, but also by Morgan Stanley, whose Richard Hill looked at the latest CMBS 2.0 remittance reports and observed that in June, “delinquent loans rose by $142MM, including a potential reps breach.” As Hill puts it, “this delinquency increase was the greatest ever.” The silver lining: so too was the decline in specially serviced and watchlist loans, as near insolvent loans rolled off to delinquent status.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Jul 5, 2016.