Adaptive Reuse SoCal
News and ideas for commercial real estate in Southern California and beyond...
Friday, March 24, 2023
The bank crisis is putting more stress on commercial real estate- 3/24/2023
Monday, March 20, 2023
The Bankpocalypse continues... but much quieter
First of all, I looked up the term "Bankpocalypse" yesterday, just as a joke. There were 665 results. Today there were 340 results. It appears someone is scrubbing the term from Google Search results. For real. To put that in perspective, my first name is Steve, and I googled "Stevepocalypse," which is absurd, and not likely to very popular, unless you hate all guys named Steve. There were 1,030 results. Three times as many as Bankpocalypse. Hmmmmm...
First Republic Bank- Despite a $30 billion cash infusion last week, deposited in the bank by several major banks, for 120 days, the bank's stock continued to tank today. It closed at $12.18, down more than $20 from last week, and down 89.4% from it's March 8, 2023 price of $115. So they are still struggling to straighten out things, and restore confidence in depositors.
Western Bancorp- Their stock is about where it was last Friday, closing at $18.12, down about 6% from March 8th, and down from about $25 at the beginning of 2023.
Pac West Bancorp- Their stock is also about where it was last Friday at market close, down about 61.8% since March 8, 2023. The stock went from $26.68 on the 8th to 10.12 today.
To put these regional bank stocks in perspective, Wells Fargo stock, one of the Big 5 banks, is down 19.6% since March 6th, 2023. Banks at all levels have taken a hit. J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and CitiGroup are all still down a fair amount, 10% or more, as well, since March 6th.
The $494.9 billion dollars loaned to the banks of the U.S. last week seems to have helped the stock market today, but not the banks as much as I would have expected.
Blogger's Note- The Next Day- 3/21/2023- There's some crazy blurb on the CNBC site saying First Repbublic stock is up 50%. This morning the stock rose from $12 and change to $16 and change right now. The stock chart still looks like a cliff, and New Republic's stock is still down 90% in the last year. Here's the chart.
Blogger's note- 3/23/2023- According to this CNBC article today, more than $70 billion more has been loaned to banks in the last couple days. Some through the new BTFP program, and more to the closed down banks. That puts the total to bailout well over half a trillion dollars within two weeks of the beginning of the bank crisis. The stock market indicies were up today, with major banks down some, and First Republic stock holding steady now.
How I got interested in the idea of repurposing old buildings- aka Adatpive Reuse
Sunday, March 19, 2023
Sunday 3/19/2023- We have passed the 2023 "Lehman Brothers" moment... now everyone gets bailed out- except working people
For those of us weird economic-type geeks, we've been looking for landmarks in the road into this recession, depression, or whatever this turns out to be.
Latest news- noon PDT, 3/19/2023- Zurich-based investment bank UBS has made a deal to buy failing investment bank Credit Suisse, in Switzerland, reportedly for about a billion U.S. dollars. This will help stem the fear of bank failure contagion in Europe, and around the world. Here's the Reuters news report on the deal, from a little over an hour ago.
So here's how I compare this the 2023 Bank Crisis "landmarks" to the 2008 Great Recession:
Bear Stearns/March 2008- 2023 version- Collapse of Silvergate bank about 10 days ago- This "crypto friendly" bank out of San Diego was allowed ot collapse, possibly to send a message to the banking world to stay away from crypto.
Lehman Brothers collapse/September 2008- 2023 version- Silicon Valley Bank collapse- SVB was shut down a week ago, after a two day bank run, and taken over by the FDIC. This was followed in a couple of days by the collapse FDIC takeover of Signature Bank, another "crypto friendly" bank. The FDIC, U.S. Treasury deptartment, and The Fed (Federal Reserve) joined forces to say that depositors will get their money back, and later agreed to pay back those who had uninsured accounts (over $250K per account). Somewhere between 85% and 95% of SVB deposits were not insured. Bank stock shareholders and bond holders expected to lose money, but may get something from the sale proceeds.
AIG problems/Sept. 2008- 2023 Version- First Republic Bank- Days after Lehman Brothers was allowed to collapse in 2008, AIG, a large investment bank, was bailed out, citing a systemic risk to the whole banking system. This is where the "too big to fail" idea was born, or at least popularized. After Silicon Valley Bank and Signature banks were allowed ot collapse a week ago, the top 5 large U.S, banks, and a few second tier big banks, all pitched in, $30 billion total, to deposit in New Republic Bank for 120 days, to help stabilize it. which was also seeing withdrawals and a huge collapse in the stock price.
In the last week, the banks of the United States borrowed 464.9 billion dollars (see article in last post), plus the $30 billion that was loaned to First Republic by the other banks. That's just under a half a TRILLION dollars in loans to try and restore faith in the U.S. banking system.
I think now we will see many more banks, smaller regional banks, that are struggling, and when they reach a crisis point, they will be bought out by larger banks. This makes the overall system less stable in the long run. But that's how things work.
Saturday, March 18, 2023
The U.S. Banking Bailout is already at almost half a trillion in loans to banks
According to this article from the U.K. newspaper/news site, The Guardian, U.S. banks have borrowed $300 billion from the Federal Reserve, to shore up their books, and cover the rising number of withdrawals. $143 bllion of that was loaned to the holding companies of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, to cover the money owed to depositors. The Fed did not disclose which banks got the rest of the money.
In addition to that money, another $153 billion was loaned through the traditional Fed Discount Window, and another $11.9 billion was loaned out in the new program, just set up last Sunday, to allow banks to borrow against assets to cover outflows to depositors. These amounts total $464.9 billion in loans, just in this first week of the banking crisis.
In addition to all those loans from The Fed, several large banks also loaned a total of $30 billion to First Republic Bank, whose stock dropped precipitously on the fears of contagion in the banking system. That puts the total amount loaned out, in about a week, at $494.9 billion, to keep the banking system afloat.
In Europe, it's been widely reported that $54 billion of loans went to Credit Suisse, to shore up that bank.
Check out the Adaptive Reuse SoCal Pinterest page... it's already pretty weird
Thursday, March 16, 2023
Factory Rider: Ray's MTB- 110,000 square feet of indoor mountain bike trails in Cleveland, Ohio
Wednesday, March 15, 2023
Commerical Mortgage Backed Securities creation has tanked 85%
According to this report by The Real Deal, the total amount of CMBS bonds created has dropped by 85% from a year ago. Los Angeles and Orange County have loans on 400+ commerical properties maturing this year (2023), meaning new financing a much high interest rates for property owners. This short article, from Feb 22, 2023, says that new commerical real estate deals (big enough to require CMBS financing, I'm assuming) has basically ground to a halt. This report was three weeks ago, before the collapses of Silvergate, Silicon Valley Bank, Signature bank, and the current floundering of Credit Suisse in Europe. I think it's safe to safe there will not be many large building deals happening anytime soon.
This is why I've been drawn to blog on this subject. I'm not an expert, I am quite the opposite. I spent over ten years on the East Coast, driving past post-apocalyptic looking factories, warehouses, and other large empty buildings. The there's the well known rise in dead malls, and the Retail Apocalypse, which has closed down way over 20,000 retail chain stores in recent years.
I keep wondering how we can put some of these facilities to a better, profitable, and productive use in the years ahead. My reason for writing this blog is to dig into this whole issue of finding new uses for old and abandoned properties. I'm not going to look just at the mega-deals open to the super wealthy, but also to the possible rehabilitation of all kinds of offices, retail storefronts, industrial buildings, homes, and other properties that are now empty, or soon to be empty, around the country. This is a HUGE trend throughout the U.S., and probably many other countries. So I'm going to look at what different people have already done to repurpose buildings, the Big Picture (economy, recession, where we're headed), and see what other potential ideas I may come up with, to make good use of empty and unused buildings of all kinds. That's the basic plan to get this blog started... after getting sidetracked with the bank collapses.
Check out the Adaptive Reuse SoCal Pinterest page... it's already pretty weird
The bank crisis is putting more stress on commercial real estate- 3/24/2023
In this Yahoo Finance report from today (3/24/2023), they talk about how the bank crisis is not a good thing for commercial real estate, in...
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For those of us weird economic-type geeks, we've been looking for landmarks in the road into this recession, depression, or whatever th...
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Silicon Valley Bank collapsed and was taken over by the FDIC a little over 48 hours ago. They are auctioning off (or trying to) the assets,...
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Is this the end for commerical real estate? Or even civilization itself? Do we all need to go build crazy rat rods and dress in black leat...