Yes, indeedy-doo. I've mentioned it in passing recently:
Commercial Real Estate
On the upside
As a nearby example: The Dell complex has been a ghost town for the past couple years. Although they are now building 2 lights-out (few employees) data centers on their grounds. Maybe they could turn the remaining buildings in to homeless camps. But I rather doubt it as they seem to be running large underground fiber optics lines between the vacant buildings.
What is troubling about the commercial side is it's impact to the nearby private housing side of the equation. If say the Dell campus turned into a giant homeless campground - what would be the impact to local housing values, not to mention the local property tax revenues from declining prices? Also, consider the impact to adjacent commercial properties that lost business to the vacant grounds. Things like gas stations, restaurants, stores etc., etc.
We may not be out of the woods for quite some time yet!
I'm afraid the next hammer to drop will involve non-performing CFE mortgages. Regional and community banks hold a disproportionate share of loans on commercial real estate, and many of them will come due later in 2023 and throughout 2024. Office buildings, in particular, have been performing very poorly, especially since the covid- and post-covid eras have spawned a management rethink about the growing number of employees working from home and accommodating their strong desire to continue doing so -- at least for a couple of days out of the workweek in many cases.
Many Class A office building are doing just fine, but thousands of B+ and lower properties are sucking wind. Many owners are exploring the prospects of repurposing them as apartment units, but that will involve wrenching changes and property devaluations.
Look out for the potential damage caused by the aggregate value of marked-to-market portfolios of CFE mortgages sinking like a stone!
Originally Posted by Texas Contrarian