Interest Rate Cap Costs Are Surging Again

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A lot of financing and refinancing strategies among CRE owners have become waiting games. Hold until interest rates eventually go down — putting off loan maturities or new purchases as much as possible — until they can get themselves out of trouble.

One of the types of tools for floating rate interest loans have been interest rate caps, which offer some protection against the increase of interest rates when some benchmark like SOFR crosses a threshold. At least until the rate cap fees started jumping in 2020 and the costs started to crush transactionsby May. Things continued to get worse by October. And then … they kept getting worse. In 2023, the rate cap cost increases were crushing even more CRE transactions.

Concerns eventually started to ease as inflation seemed to be coming under control and there was a growing thought that the Federal Reserve would start cutting rates. Three times during 2024. Granted, that three cuts of probably 25 basis points each would be less than now, but the total 75-basis point amount wouldn’t be terribly compelling.

However, the thought of future rate cuts provided hope. Not now.

“The one-month forward curve shows that investors now think the secured overnight financing rate, or SOFR, which is closely related to the federal-funds rate, will be 4.825% at the start of 2025,” the Wall Street Journal wrote. “This implies up to two small cuts this year. Back in January, six cuts were expected.”

An improvement of cap rates had begun because the risk of the provider having to cover higher interest rates looked as though it would slow and then abate. Not now, because the expectation for rate cuts is becoming more pessimistic.

“The cost of these caps has become a major headache for property owners, according to Carol Ng, a managing director at risk-management firm Derivative Logic,” the Journal wrote. “The price of a one-year extension for an interest-rate cap on a $100 million mortgage at a 3% strike rate is now $2.1 million. Back in January, when the market expected more rate cuts, the same extension cost $1.3 million.”

But there are other estimates. Chatham Financial’s interest rate cap calculator looking at 3% constant SOFR strike rate on $100 million is almost $4.61 million, making that $2.1 million estimate look good in comparison.

 

Source:  GlobeSt.

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Multifamily’s Tough Times Will Be A Boon For Bargain Buyers

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The multifamily fall from grace over the last couple of years was unexpected by most at the market’s pandemic highs. The increase in interest rates have hit hard, as have some other factors.

But according to Ralph Rosenberg, partner and global head of real estate at global investment firm KKR, problematic conditions should start tapering off after 2025, leaving strong possibilities for rent growth and opportunities to “buy high-quality properties below replacement cost while achieving attractive long-term yields.”

The factors confounding multifamily certainly start with interest rates.

“Debt levels relative to equity are higher in multifamily than in some other segments, a loan maturity wall looms, and interest rate caps are expiring, putting many owners in the position of refinancing at a time when their properties are worth less than their acquisition basis and interest rates are much higher,” Rosenberg wrote.

He notes that multifamily is one of the most leveraged of CRE investments. That makes refinancing challenging. There is a loan maturity wall, reduced availability of financing, and high debt loads.

That’s only one part. As GlobeSt.com has previously reported, 2023 saw a record number of apartment unit deliveries added to inventory and 2024 is expected to top that by half again. These aren’t evenly distributed across the country, but the concentration in places even with high increases in population is still enough to depress prices, occupancy rates, and rent growth.

In addition, operational costs have increased.

“Floating-rate interest payments rose faster than income from rent and fees,” the firm said. Falling valuations aided in negatively affecting debt service coverage ratios, making many properties fiscally unsustainable to the lender. Also, utilities and property taxes have continued to climb, adding to multifamily difficulties.

“Over $250 billion in multifamily loan debt matures in 2024 alone, and some owners will face a gap upon refinancing,” they wrote. “Likewise, as interest rate caps typically last for three years, many owners are looking at a sharp increase in the cost of debt.”

KKR expects a tough couple of years in a deleveraging cycle. Owners and investors who can hold on during this period face different conditions coming out. There is the chance of lower interest rates, although the degree and pace of any reductions are up in the air now. Demand for units will grow as the rising expenses and difficulty of continuation of building make it virtually impossible to keep pace with additional units. Currently, supply growth forecasts for many metropolitan areas are below the 2018-to-2022 five-year average, and that wasn’t adequate to satisfy market needs.

Buyers with sufficient resources will find many opportunities.

“Consider what would happen to a multifamily property purchased in February 2024 at a 5.5% cap rate (a measure of the one-year yield on a property calculated by dividing NOI by asset value) with 50% leverage,” they wrote. “Assume that NOI grows at a 3% CAGR. As interest rates come down, it might be possible to sell at a cap rate of 5.0% five years later, in 2029. That equates to an internal rate of return of roughly 14.5% over five years, which is attractive for a historically stable, in-demand asset class.”

 

Source:  GlobeSt.

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Troubled CRE Is Tapering While Sales Out of Distress Increase

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The total amount of distressed CRE reached more than $88.6 billion by the end of 2024’s first quarter through the addition of net $2.7 billion, according to a new MSCI capital trends report.

The net addition was the result of $9.9 billion new property distress offset by $7.2 billion worked out during the quarter.

For current distress, office is far and away the largest property type example, with almost $38.2 billion. That’s followed by retail’s nearly $21.9 billion, roughly $14.2 billion in hotels, about $10 billion in multifamily, $1.6 billion in retail, and $2.8 billion in other types.

More than half of the new distress was office. Retail was the only category in which there was a net reduction in distress, with $1.5 billion in additional properties and $1.9 billion in workouts during the quarter. One deal — Kerring’s $963 million purchase of the retail space at 717 Fifth Ave. — brought the “share of troubled asset sales to 8.9% for the retail sector,” MSCI wrote.

“While the net addition of distress has tapered over the past three quarters, sales out of distress have increased,” the firm said. “Troubled asset sales accounted for 3.9% of all deal volume in the first quarter of 2024. The last time distressed sales constituted this large a share of the total market was in late 2015, with the sale of Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village in New York.”

While distressed sales have spiked, a similar amount was seen in 2018. As a share of total sales, the last time they reached this point was in 2016.

More concerning is potential distress, which MSCI defines as indicating “possible future property-level financial trouble due to events such as delinquent loan payments, forbearance and slow lease up/sell out, among others. This also includes CMBS loans placed on master servicer watchlists.”

Total potential distress at this point is $205 billion. Multifamily leaps ahead of even office ($50.3 billion) in this category with $56.1 billion. Hotel sits at $28.6 billion; retail is $28.4 billion; industrial is $27.1 billion; and other types come to $15.3 billion.

It’s important to remember that potential distress isn’t the same as a projection of what will happen. Instead, it’s a calculation of what might happen, with a lot of time and space for that to change for the better or worse.

Total current distress is highest in the Northeast at $29.0 billion. Second highest is the West, with $16.3 billion. Then, in volume order, come the Midwest ($13.2 billion), Mid-Atlantic ($10.9 billion), Southwest ($9.8 billion), and Southeast ($9.4 billion).

 

Source:  GlobeSt.

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Driven By High Rates, U.S. Commercial Lending Imploded 47%

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In 2023, total commercial real estate mortgage borrowing and lending was estimated at $429 billion, marking a 47 percent decline from $816 billion in 2022, and a 52 percent fall from the record high of $891 billion in 2021. These figures are highlighted in the Mortgage Bankers Association’s 2023 Commercial Real Estate/Multifamily Finance Annual Origination Volume Summation.

The MBA survey, which does not include data from smaller and mid-sized depositories, recorded $306 billion in loans closed by dedicated commercial mortgage bankers in 2023, a 49 percent decrease from $595 billion in 2022.

Jamie Woodwell, MBA’s Head of Commercial Real Estate Research, commented, “Higher interest rates, uncertainty about property values, and concerns over the fundamentals of some properties contributed to a sharp decline in CRE borrowing and lending last year. The reduction was widespread across all major property types and capital sources. The continued increase in the total CRE mortgage debt indicates that the drop in originations mainly reflected a lower borrower demand, influenced by fewer sales transactions and refinances. Where possible, property owners opted to hold steady.”

Woodwell also noted, “2024 seems to be starting slowly as well. High interest rates will likely remain a hindrance for many property owners, but with over $900 billion in loan maturities expected, and possibly a growing acceptance of these rates, we might see more activity in the market this year.”

Regarding specific property types, multifamily properties experienced the highest lending volume in the previous year, with an estimated total of $264 billion, and $178 billion of that directly tracked by dedicated mortgage bankers. First liens made up 96 percent of the dollar volume closed by mortgage bankers.

Mortgage banking firms reported closing $306 billion of CRE loans in their names and acting as intermediaries on another $225 billion. These firms also served as investment sales brokers for transactions worth $225 billion.

Depositories emerged as the top capital source for CRE mortgage debt, followed by life insurance companies, pension funds, government-sponsored enterprises (Ginnie Mae, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac), private label CMBS, and investor-driven lenders.

 

Source:  The World Property Journal

 

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Commercial Foreclosures Up 117% Year Over Year

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The number of commercial foreclosures in the U.S. has steadily increased, from a low of 141 in May 2020 to 625 in March 2024, according to an updated report from ATTOM.

That represents a 6% increase from the prior month and a 117% increase from last year. The real estate data tracking firm also noted that California, New York, and Florida were the states with the most foreclosures.

New York had a total of 61 commercial foreclosures in March 2024, a 5% increase from the prior month and a 65% increase from a year ago. Florida saw increases of 30% and 107%, respectively. Texas saw increases of 31% and 129%, and New Jersey saw increases of 31% and 133%.

Foreclosure filings on commercial real estate property in California in January 2024 were triple the number of foreclosures in January 2023, according to ATTOM data. Banks in California have a great deal of exposure to commercial real estate with 31% of Golden State bank portfolios carrying three times larger loans than capital.

The recent increase in foreclosures follows a multi-year low of just 141 in May 2020, reflecting the immediate impacts of the pandemic and swift response measures like moratoriums and financial aid for owners.

“Despite challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic and evolving economic policies, the market demonstrated remarkable adaptability,” ATTOM reported. “Initial pandemic-related foreclosures were followed by a stabilization as businesses adjusted to new realities.”

 

Source:  GlobeSt.

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STNL Cap Rates Won’t Be Coming Down Soon

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Cap rates for the single-tenant net-lease sector increased for the eighth consecutive quarter in Q1 2024, jumping to an average of 6.64% across all major asset types.

STNL asking cap rates for office properties hit 7.6% in Q1, followed by industrial, which averaged 7.02%, and retail, which jumped to 6.42%, according to the latest market report from The Boulder Group.

According to The Boulder Group’s Jimmy Goodman, the current cycle of STNL cap rate increases is the longest since 2014. In an interview at GlobeSt.’s Net Lease conference in NYC this week, Goodman said STNL cap rates will remain elevated until the Fed starts cutting interest rates.

“I think we’re at status quo, this is the new normal until the Fed moves to cut rates,” Goodman said. “Everyone had this level of hope last year that we would have rate cuts this year, but 2024 is looking a lot like 2023.”

“Now, people are hoping for a rate cut in Q3, but it probably won’t be a large cut,” he added. “Until then, nothing will change. Cap rates will increase or plateau. I don’t see them decreasing any time soon.”

The new status quo also is likely to keep transaction volume at a minimum — one description we heard is “flatlining” — as buyers are few and far between and sellers refuse to reprice their deals to higher cap rates.

Most of the players in the STNL market are in it for the long-term, typically with 10- or 20-year leases, and they can wait out the down cycle, Goodman noted.

“It’s a steady cash flow. The lenders, the equity, they know they’re going to get a check from the tenant,” he said. “If a $2M Starbucks just got built, it’s got a 10-year lease and they know they’re going to get paid.”

Sellers are still in denial about bringing their pricing in line with the new status quo on cap rates, Goodman suggested.

“If you’re a developer, you still want to make money off your merchant developer deals. The public REITs and people that are subject to financing can’t pay the cap rates the developer wants, and the developer doesn’t want to be upside down,” he said.

“Everyone is staring at each other and nobody is blinking,” Goodman added.

 

Source:  GlobeSt.

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Treasurys Get Harder To Sell And That’s Not Good For CRE

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In the latter half of last week, yields on Treasury 10-years jumped, hitting 4.55% on Wednesday, moving to 4.56% on Thursday, and dropping down to 4.50% on Friday. By the end of Monday, it was 4.63%

If you ignore 2023 when rising interest rates had a heavy impact on Treasury yields, the last time the 10-year was in this range was in the fall of 2007, as the initial rumblings of what would become the Global Financial Crisis.

Markets are not seeing the trembling of an out-of-control housing market and the derivatives built on top of it. But the current shakings might be worse.

“A series of weak auctions for U.S. Treasurys are stoking investors’ concerns that markets will struggle to absorb an incoming rush of government debt,” the Wall Street Journal reported. “A selloff sparked by a hotter-than-expected inflation report intensified this past week after lackluster demand for a $39 billion sale of 10-year Treasurys. Investors also showed tepid interest in auctions for three-year and 30-year Treasurys.”

The worry among investors is that if inflation doesn’t continue to sink, the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates where they are now rather than start cutting as investors have wanted. Or maybe increase rates if they decide it’s necessary to break the back of rising prices.

May will bring another $386 billion in bond sales, and, as the Journal notes, this will continue no matter who is elected president in November. The first quarter of 2024 saw the Treasury sell $7.2 trillion in debt. Last year, the government issued $23 trillion in Treasurys, “which raised $2.4 trillion of cash, after accounting for maturing bonds.” But a number of Treasury auctions did more poorly than expected. The Treasury Department decided to push short-term instruments as the Fed encouraged the idea that eventually they would cut interest rates. That would make higher-rate Treasurys more valuable in a presumed near term.

With inflation started to strengthen again, that strategy becomes less appealing to buyers. Also, the Fed has said it will slow quantitative tightening, which is how it reduces its balance sheet holdings of Treasury instruments. Tightening expects that investors would buy more debt. As the Fed reduces tightening, the government might lower its expectations of how much investors needed to buy.

From a CRE perspective, the more debt on sale, the greater degree that circumstances invoke the law of supply and demand. Prices will likely drop to get enough investor purchases, which would send yields up as the two aspects move inversely. The 10-year yield is one of the standard baseline rates used in CRE lending. The other, the Secured Overnight Financing Rate, or SOFR, is strongly correlated to the 10-year, though often with a timing gap.

If baseline rates go up, so do borrowing costs, which is the big problem faced by many with maturing loans and who need refinancing but who based their business case on low interest rates and high leverage that are no longer available.

And then there is the psychological factor. All investors, whether individuals, organizations, or sovereign states, are under the thumb of human emotion. The more risk they perceive, the more skittish they are as buyers, which could push down Treasury prices even more, driving up expected yield and negatively affecting CRE.

 

Source:  GlobeSt.

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Banks Have Another Reason To Scale Back CRE Lending

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The pressure that banks are feeling from CRE loans has become a regular observation by the Federal Reserve, Department of the Treasury, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, other regulators, economics, financial analysis, investors … pretty much everyone paying attention.

But there’s an odd twist according to a new analysis by economist and economic policy advisor Miguel Faria e Castro and senior research associate Samuel Jordan-Wood at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

“Given the negative outlook on certain segments of CRE, one would expect that more-exposed banks have experienced worse market performances,” the two wrote. “We found that while CRE exposure has not mattered much for bank stock returns since the 2007-09 financial crisis, the correlation became significantly negative in 2023.”

The analysis started with an examination of the relationship between commercial real estate exposure as a share of total assets on one hand and total assets in billions of dollars, on a natural logarithm scale. Something immediately obvious is that the largest banks have a relatively small exposure in CRE loans as they represent 10% or less of their assets. But smaller to medium banks had high exposures, in some cases topping 60%.

They found that those banks with high exposure to CRE loans tended to have “relatively fewer liquid assets on their balance sheets, lower capital ratios (that is, more leverage), a larger share of their liabilities in the form of deposits, and a larger share of their assets in the form of loans.”

They then moved beyond a correlation analysis and used regression to look at the connection between CRE exposure and bank returns.

“From 2007 to 2008, the beta coefficient was statistically significant and negative, implying that banks with higher CRE exposure had lower stock market returns, all other variables equal,” they said. “Since the 2007-09 financial crisis affected not only residential real estate but also CRE, it is natural that more-exposed banks performed worse during that time. Our analysis reveals that while the correlation had been mostly inactive since then, it again became significantly negative in 2023.”

So, it seems to be another way banks are currently feeling negative effects from CRE exposure. Not just in concern over asset values and regulatory pressures, but in actual earnings.

 

Source:  GlobeSt.

 

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Some Experts Float the Possibility That the Fed Could Raise Rates Again

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Wednesday’s Consumer Price Index numbers were higher than expected, sending Wall Street into a swoon about what it could mean.

For starters, it’s just about a given that, following this latest evidence that prices are not declining as fast as had been expected, the Fed will delay implementing its promised rate cuts. But some prominent voices are wondering about a worse case scenario: that the Fed might actually start raising rates. If this were to come to pass, simply put it would raise havoc in commercial real estate. GlobeSt.com has heard repeatedly over the last few months that transactions were resuming in part because the market believed that the Fed was done raising rates, introducing some much-needed certainty into forecasts.

Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers is one of these voices.

“You have to take seriously the possibility that the next rate move will be upwards rather than downwards,” Summers said on Bloomberg Television. He said such a likelihood is somewhere in the 15% to 25% range.

The odds still do favor a Fed rate cut this year, “but not as much as is priced into markets,” he said.

Also, Federal Reserve Governor Michelle Bowman said earlier this month that it’s possible interest rates may have to move higher to control inflation.

“While it is not my baseline outlook, I continue to see the risk that at a future meeting we may need to increase the policy rate further should progress on inflation stall or even reverse,” she said in a recent speech to the Shadow Open Market Committee in New York.  “Reducing our policy rate too soon or too quickly could result in a rebound in inflation, requiring further future policy rate increases to return inflation to 2 percent over the longer run.”

Bowman is a permanent voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has also floated the possibility that rates could increase in his letter to shareholders. The investment bank is  preparing “for a very broad range of interest rates, from 2% to 8% or even more,” he wrote.

These voices, though, are in the minority. Right now, most analysts have coalesced around the theory that rate cuts will be delayed this year.

Less than 24 hours after the CPI was released, Wall Street economists began revising their outlooks. Goldman Sachs and UBS now see two cuts starting in July and September, respectively, while analysts at Barclays anticipate just one reduction, in September, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Others are even more pessimistic about the timing.

“The lack of moderation in inflation will undermine Fed officials’ confidence that inflation is on a sustainable course back to 2% and likely delays rate cuts to September at the earliest and could push off rate reductions to next year,” Kathy Bostjancic, chief economist at Nationwide, said in a research note that was reported by The Associated Press.

Right now the Fed’s official expectation is that inflation continues to move down albeit in an uneven trajectory. If this is true, then rate cuts are still likely this year.

However, Wall Street worries that inflation has stalled at a level closer to 3% and if the evidence bears this out in future reports, it is conceivable that the Fed could scrap cuts altogether.

One indicator that does not bode well for rate cuts this year is the so-called supercore inflation reading, which besides excluding the volatile food and energy prices that the core CPI does, also strips out shelter and rent costs from its services reading.

Supercore accelerated to a 4.8% pace year over year in March, the highest in 11 months, according to CNBC.

Tom Fitzpatrick, managing director of global market insights at R.J. O’Brien & Associates, told the publication that if you take the readings of the last three months and annualize them, the supercore inflation rate is more than 8%.

All this said, the Fed has promised it would cut rates three times this year and that is a hard promise to unwind. The upheaval a rate hike would cause would give the institution a black eye even worse than its promises a few years ago that the creeping inflation in the economy was transitory.

 

Source:  GlobeSt.

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Just How Big is the Wall of Maturities?

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According to Newmark, there is now a $2 trillion maturity wall of CRE loans facing banks over the next three years. A dizzying sum.

But the statement raises a question. When the size of the oncoming wall — or wave or lava flow, or whatever to call the coming flood — is mentioned, is anyone really sure of the size?

CRED iQ’s database at middle of December 2023 showed “approximately $210 billion in commercial mortgages that are scheduled to mature in 2024, with an additional $111 billion of CRE debt maturing in 2025. In total, CRED iQ has aggregated and organized a total of $320 billion of commercial mortgages slated to mature within the next 24 months.”

In February 2024, the Mortgage Bankers Association said that 20% of commercial and multifamily mortgage balances were to mature this year.

“Twenty percent ($929 billion) of the $4.7 trillion of outstanding commercial mortgages held by lenders and investors will mature in 2024, a 28 percent increase from the $729 billion that matured in 2023, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s 2023 Commercial Real Estate Survey of Loan Maturity Volumes,” they wrote.

Even discussions can be misleading. Take the Financial Times article. The headline is, “Banks face $2tn of maturing US property debt over next 3 years.” The immediate question becomes how much of banks’ portfolios are coming due? But to get there, it’s critical to see what the total holdings are.

According to the Federal Reserve’s “Assets and Liabilities of Commercial Banks in the United States,” also known as H.8, thetotal of commercial real estate loans, including multifamily, held by banks was $2,985.5 billion during the week of March 20, 2024. Given the timelines of loans, most frequently five-year cycles, a 20% turnover annually is a realistic estimate. But a $2 trillion count would be two-thirds of all bank loans, which doesn’t seem plausible.

GlobeSt.com contacted Newmark for some clarity. The firm responded with information from David Bitner, Newmark’s executive managing director and global head of research. Here are his points:

  • “The $2T figure should indeed refer to ALL CRE loans (including 5+ unit multifamily).”
  • “Bank maturities are the largest share of near-term maturities, which is a large part of why we focus on them.”
  • “Debt fund and CMBS/CRE CLO debt is also front-loaded.”
  • “Data comes from Mortgage Bankers Association latest Loan Maturities report (released in mid-February).”

So, the pool of loans is much larger than those held only by banks. Even with the “extend and pretend” treatment lenders seeking to keep losses off their balance sheets, eventually reality sets in. In one sense, it won’t matter who holds the loans. As accounting standards eventually force lenders to write off clear losses, the result would be a large exercise in mark-to-market, lowering the value of many if not all CRE loans.

That would hurt the total asset values of many banks, which is the condition that led to the closures of Silicon Valley Bank, First Republic Bank, and Signature Bank last year. As Gosin told the FT, such a result would force some banks “to liquidate their loans or find other ways to reduce their weight in real estate,” whether by finding ways to increase capital, offload the risk, or further reduce the amount of CRE lending they do.

 

Source:  GlobeSt.

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