Four big defaults in U.S. commercial real estate in less than a month

In this video above, "Nobody Special" cites reports of Google asking workers to share desks to increase "office efficiency," for those coming in to the office two days a week.  

Google getting Monday/Wednesday workers to share desks with Tuesday/Thursday office workers is not earth shattering news in today's world.  But our host above follows this up by reporting on a $1.7 billion commercial loan default Columbia Property Trust, a Pimco owned company.  He follows that with a story on defaults on two more loans on downtown L.A. buildings by Brookfield Properties.  Those defaults on the Gas Company Tower and 777 South Figueroa Street, both in downtown L.A., added up to $784 million defaulted on, according to this report.  That's nearly $2.5 billion in defaults on large building financing, in under three weeks.  The properties are located in San Francisco, New York, Jersey City, and Los Angeles.  This report is from late February.

Following the report above, on March 3rd, I believe, came another default report.  This one, explained here on Bloomberg TV, tells that Blackstone defaulted on $567 million commercial mortgage backed securities CMBS), on office properties in Finland.  First of all, this is Blackstone, alluded to by some as the "evil empire," and one of thhe most powerful and well connected businesses in the world.  In the news segment linked, it's explained that the offices financed by these securites were averaging about 45% occupancy.  Low occupancy rates due to work-from-home and other issues, combined with rapidly rising interest rates, and the use of "flotaing rate debt" to finance these buildings, is turning regular refinancing into crises.  As these short term financing securities come up for refinancing, the higher interest rates are often tripling monthly payments for property owners, leading to major decisions on what action to take next.  

Obviously, because floating rate debt has been a popular way to finance large buildings in the recent low interest rate environment years, other companies will have much higher payments, as the time to refi comes up.  Will we see more, similar, large defaults?  Or will this be a short spike, an outlier?  Time will tell.