The Rules are changing

Friday, May 29, 2009

Fannie, Freddie toughening rules for condo buyers to qualify for loans

Business First of Columbus - by Kevin Kemper

A difficult market for condominium sales will become more challenging July 1, and condo developers and sellers aren’t happy about it.

They say Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are making rule changes that will slow any recovery of the housing market, even if the changes are designed to protect condo purchasers.

“It makes it far more difficult to get people qualified when they adjust the rules and regulations midstream,” said Tré Giller, president of Westerville condo developer Village Communities.

Starting July 1, McLean, Va.-based Freddie Mac will only buy or guarantee mortgages for condos in new developments that are at least 70 percent presold, a change from its 51 percent requirement. It is a move that follows a March 1 rule change by Washington, D.C.-based Fannie Mae that does the same.

614-220-5460 | kkemper@bizjournals.com

Car pooling in NYC

May 28, 2009, 1:04 PM

Taxi Commission Approves Ride-Sharing Experiments

By WILLIAM NEUMAN

The Taxi and Limousine Commission on Thursday approved two experiments that will make riding in some yellow cabs a bit more like car pooling, a commission spokesman said.

The first experiment, which could be implemented this fall, would establish several pick up spots in Manhattan where taxis can take on more than one paying rider at a time during the morning rush hour. The cabs would then drive along a designated corridor and riders, who will pay a flat fee, could disembark at any point along the corridor.

In one example, officials said that riders could get in a cab at Pennsylvania Station and the taxi would take them up Avenue of the Americas as far as 59th Street, for a $4 charge.

Other possible pickup locations were Grand Central Terminal and the Port Authority Bus Terminal, with cabs from both those spots also heading up Avenue of the Americas. Uptown pickup spots, at 72nd Street and Third Avenue and 72nd Street and Eighth Avenue, would send cabs to a corridor along Park Avenue, to 42nd Street.

A second experiment would equip yellow cabs with meters that could keep track of two fares at once, allowing drivers to stop while carrying one passenger to pick up another street hail.

Up to 1,000 cabs — out of a total of 13,237 — could be equipped with the new meters, as well as electronic signs that would let people on the street know what neighborhood the cab was headed to, which would allow people to hail a cab going in their direction.

Riders in those cabs would be rewarded with a discount on a part of the fare — 50 percent off the mileage or wait time charges — for the part of their trip when the cab was carrying a second fare.

That program may not be ready until late this year or next year because new technology must be developed, officials said.

Both experiments will be run as pilot programs, to be evaluated after several months or a year.

The commission also approved a separate experiment for livery cars. That would allow locations like shopping malls to set up dispatch centers for the cars. That program could also begin in the fall.

Despite housing downturn, renters get no relief

Study shows costs are not going down, lowest-income tenants hurt worst

The Associated Press

updated 7:13 p.m. ET, Tues., April 14, 2009

NEW YORK - Jeffrey Myers can't make the rent — by himself. He works part-time at UPS and as a freelance photographer, but the $2,200 he pulls in a month isn't enough to afford an apartment in Orange County, Calif., without a roommate.

"It's hard to meet people who live by themselves. Most people have roommates," said Myers, 31.

For homebuyers, affordability is the best it's been for decades, but for millions of renters coast to coast affordability is still getting worse, according to a study released Tuesday.

As the recession forces more Americans out of work, working-class tenants are bearing the brunt of the cuts. Record foreclosures, at the same time, mean more people are competing for low-cost rentals. And rents in many expensive cities still haven't budged because so few apartments were built in recent years.

A renter earning the nation's minimum wage of $6.55 could not afford a one-bedroom apartment in any county in the nation.

"It's a very dire situation," said Dean Baker, co-director for the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "And it's likely to get worse in the two years ahead," as unemployment climbs and businesses cut worker hours and pay.

A renter needs to earn $17.84 an hour to cover the monthly rent on the average $928 two-bedroom apartment, if they don't want to spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing. But the median hourly wage for an American renter is $14.69, more than $3 short of what's needed, according to the study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

"So what's going to happen is a lot, unfortunately, will be out on the streets," said Edward Wolff, an economist at New York University.

The lowest-income renters stand to get hit hardest. The unemployment rate is at a 25-year high of 8.5 percent, but that percentage was even higher — 12.6 percent — for those without a high school degree. Some of the worst layoffs have come from industries that employ low-income workers like construction, retail and manufacturing.

Families displaced by foreclosures are also flooding the apartment market, increasing competition for affordable rentals.

"It's likely they're income-constrained or don't have credit or savings," for costlier apartments, said Rachel Drew, a research analyst at Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies.

And while rents are falling in some individual markets, many cities are showing little signs of softness because demand for apartments remains high. Renters in Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland, Ore., all traditionally strong markets, won't see many rent cuts.

Even renters in beleaguered apartment markets like Phoenix, Atlanta, Las Vegas and Florida likely won't enjoy the deals in their areas because the local economies are reeling.

"Even when rents are dipping slightly, it's because more people are out of work," in that area, Baker said. "Affordability only improves when wages increase in proportion with rent."

The most expensive metropolitan area, according to the report, is Stamford, Conn. A renter must earn $32.75 an hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment there. San Francisco ranked second at $31.88 per hour, followed by Honolulu at $31.37, Westchester County, N.Y., at $30.96 and Santa Cruz, Calif., at $30.58 per hour.

Half of the 10 most costly metros are in California.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30216739/

Bring On the Bargains

March 2009

Bring on the bargains

In stalled market, brokers turn to price chops, auctions and low-end sales

By Candace Taylor @ The Real Deal

Six months ago, "luxury" was the all-encompassing buzzword of Manhattan real estate. Buyers happily paid astronomical sums, often sight (and even site) unseen, to live in buildings designed by world-famous architects, with private wine cellars and terrazzo marble as far as the eye could see. In an environment where financing was easy, bonuses were huge and real estate values rose at breathtaking speeds, home prices seemed almost beside the point. 

Now, Manhattan buyers are just as demanding, but their criteria have changed drastically. The new buzzword — and subject of buyers' singlemindedness — is "bargain." With real estate prices falling for the first time in a decade, home seekers are just as intent on price cuts as they once were on floor-to-ceiling windows and Sub-Zero refrigerators. 

"I tell all my sellers, 'You must give them a deal,'" said real estate doyenne Sharon Baum, a senior vice president at the Corcoran Group. "If you're not willing to do that, you shouldn't be in this market." 

The hard part is defining exactly what "a deal" is, at a time when the Standard & Poor's 500 Index has careened to its lowest close since 1997, the number of recipients of unemployment benefits has hit an all-time high of nearly 5 million and the economy seems to be in a general freefall. 

Still, Manhattan real estate agents aren't taking the slump lying down. A number of savvy high-profile brokers have begun fighting back with eyebrow-raising price cuts — in both the stratosphere of the market and the below-$1 million price range. Their new "bargain" listing prices are 20 or 30 percent lower than they would have been just months ago. 

"It's almost at the point where we're calling it Wal-Mart pricing," said Amelia Gewirtz, an executive vice president at Halstead Property. "Right now, closed comps don't even matter." 

In the face of such difficult market conditions, auctions of new condo units — a phenomenon virtually unheard of in New York City for nearly two decades — are likely to gain a toehold in the New York market in the coming months, experts say. 

Co-ops, long overshadowed by higher-priced condos, are also being viewed with increasing desirability. However, by responding to market instability with tougher restrictions, many well-intentioned co-op boards may ironically be harming the value of their own homes. 

The price cutting, meanwhile, has made its way to the rental market as well, and competition between Manhattan landlords is now so intense that for perhaps the first time, better bargains can be found in Manhattan than in many sought-after, outer-borough neighborhoods like Long Island City and Brooklyn Heights. 

Finally, bargain-hunting buyers may have more luck at the lower end of the market, as smaller one-bedrooms and studios outperform the luxury market.

www.cato-at-liberty.org

“Real Regulators” Redux

Posted by Jim Harper

Sunday’s episode of 60 Minutes featured a man named Harry Markopolos who repeatedly reported Bernie Madoff’s scam to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC did not investigate.

Steve Croft: How many times did you send material to the SEC?

Markopolos: May 2000. October 2001. October, November, and December of 2005. Then again, June 2007. And finally, April 2008. So, five separate SEC submissions.

Croft: And in spite of all of the things that you did, it still ended up in disaster.

This is a reminder of what I observed in a recent post here called “A Real Regulator.” CNBC’s Erin Burnett had called for a “real” regulator in the wake of Madoff, to which I replied:

When regulators fail to address a problem ahead of time, when they regulate inefficiently, when they hand their rulemaking organs to the industries they are supposed to oversee, those are all the actions of real regulators. That’s what you get with real regulation.

Markopolos isn’t grinding this same ax against goverment regulation. He says, “. . . [S]elf-regulation on Wall Street doesn’t work.”

So the question is posed: What allowed this to happen?

I don’t think this huge fraud occured in a “self-regulatory” environment. It occured in a regulated environment. Regulators failed to do their jobs, but investors had abandoned their responsibility to look into the people and firms with which they placed their money. They believed that the SEC was taking care of that.

It wasn’t, so nobody was minding the store. Ultimately, the SEC served as a partner to the crime, providing the “confidence” that made a success of Bernie Madoff’s confidence game.

Back to Markopolos:

That’s typically how the SEC does it. They come in after the crime has been committed, they toe-tag the victims, count the bodies, and try to figure out who the crooks were, after the fact, which does none of us any good.

Is “self-regulation” the alternative to government regulation? No. And neither is deregulation. The alternative is market regualtion, where individuals, responsible for the soundness of their purchases and investments, investigate and study who they do business with. Scams like Madoff’s would have shorter duration and do less damage if investors were not under the impression that they were protected by government regulators. Of course, out policymakers are likely to double-down on the bet on governmental regulation, even though we all just witnessed its failure.

The Downside for Condos in a downturn

February 8, 2009

By TERI KARUSH ROGERS

 DURING the recent boom, buyers who coveted condos for their sex appeal could also make the case that condos were a smarter choice than co-ops.

In theory, you didn’t have to prostrate yourself, financially and otherwise, before a board for approval, and you could sell or rent pretty much to whomever you chose, should the need, or whim, arise. You could also put down a lot less money than the 20, 25, or even 50 percent of the purchase price customarily demanded by co-ops.

But as the city’s fortunes buckle and heave, these very differences have potentially rendered some of the city’s condo buildings dangerously exposed to the downturn. Then there is a distinction many condo buyers probably dismissed as a boring legality: If a condo unit is the subject of a foreclosure, the bank gets first dibs on the equity. With real estate prices way off their peak, that means some condo buildings will collect nothing but dust from residents who have also failed to pay their common charges, leaving the remaining owners to shoulder the burden of higher costs or reduced services.

Defaults on common charges began to spike last fall, according to lawyers hired by increasingly jittery boards to file liens (the first step toward foreclosure) against owners in arrears.

“We had maybe four or five before October,” said Adam Leitman Bailey, a Manhattan real estate lawyer, referring to the number of liens his firm filed last year against condo owners in Manhattan and Brooklyn. “It really got going this fall. We had 28 filings here and 17 in Brooklyn. These aren’t in the wealthiest or the poorest buildings. It’s the buildings with the younger 30- or 35-year-old professionals buying a $1 million to $2.5 million apartment, who haven’t been working for 20 or 30 years and are relying on their job to pay for it.” Other lien-filing lawyers said the pace had picked up by at least 10 to 25 percent.

“We’re seeing more, especially in the higher-end buildings where you never heard of foreclosures,” said Adam D. Finkelstein, a real estate lawyer with Kagan Lubic Lepper Lewis Gold & Colbert in Manhattan. Starting last quarter, his firm began filing two or three liens a month, up from two or three per year.

According to figures provided by the online research company PropertyShark.com, condo lien filings more than doubled in Brooklyn during the second half of 2008, and the number of filings in Manhattan zigzagged, with 156 in the first quarter, 186 in the second, 154 in the third and 203 in the fourth.

While the aggregate number of liens is still small (47 in Brooklyn and 67 in Manhattan in December, for example), they may be the first sign of trouble: Liens typically lag months behind defaults in common charge payments, and the bottom didn’t truly fall out of the city’s economy until last fall.

Moreover, barring a swift economic renaissance, lawyers, managing agents and condo boards are bracing for things to worsen significantly this year as job losses mount, severances and savings evaporate, and the new reality sets in.

“The world as we’ve been living in it for the last several years has changed seemingly overnight,” Mr. Finkelstein said. “We’re at the very beginning of this.”

While lawyers are reporting a similar rash of defaults among co-op owners, the risk to the building (and by extension to the defaulter’s neighbors) is slight by comparison. That’s because a co-op building is entitled to its share before the bank can claim anything in the event of foreclosure (the ultimate consequence of nonpayment of maintenance charges).

But in condo foreclosures, the debt priorities are reversed. After a foreclosure process that these days can take two years — during which unpaid common charges proliferate — the building gets its due only after the bank is paid in full. And many condo owners have little equity in their apartments.

“I think it’s safe to say that the value of any apartment purchased in the last two years is less than its purchase price,” said David Kuperberg, the president of Cooper Square Realty, a Manhattan property management company. “The simple calculation is that if you bought an apartment a year ago and financed 90 percent of the purchase price, as many did, and now it’s worth 20 percent less, you’re upside-down as an owner.”

Even worse from the perspective of the condo building, if an apartment owner defaults on common charges but keeps up with mortgage payments, it falls to the building rather than the bank to pursue the foreclosure action.

In that situation, the building must pay the bank the entire balance owed under the mortgage. This prospect is so onerous in a down market that a vast majority of liens for unpaid common charges never advance to the foreclosure stage, said Aaron Shmulewitz, a real estate lawyer at Belkin Burden Wenig & Goldman in Manhattan.

Instead, buildings often sue the owners personally — looking for other assets and garnishing wages, if there are any. But they are effectively powerless to force the expulsion of a deadbeat owner who has no equity. So far, there hasn’t been an uptick in condo foreclosure filings in Manhattan and Brooklyn, according to PropertyShark.com. Instead, owners in financial distress seem more willing to play chicken with the condo board than with the bank, and they appear to have some wiggle room when pressed.

Mr. Bailey said that to date, a majority of defaulting owners had paid up once his firm had filed a lien.

“The owners are hoping we won’t file, and then they find a way to pay, whether they’re borrowing it from relatives or using their last dime,” said Mr. Bailey, who observed that the days of refinancing one’s way out of debt were long gone. “Usually they will pay for their home first, before credit cards and health insurance, because keeping a roof over their heads is their family’s biggest priority.”

But the biggest priority for condo buildings is preserving cash flow. With smaller reserves dictating a more hand-to-mouth lifestyle than that of most co-ops, many have little choice but to assess owners if defaults grow large enough. Never welcome, increased assessments can push additional owners over the brink and into arrears. That is one reason many managing agents and lawyers have begun encouraging condo boards to forsake neighborly empathy and play hardball.

“It used to be three months and then you’d file a lien, and now at the most it’s two months and in many case it’s just one month,” Mr. Shmulewitz said.

Just how long to wait depends on a building’s exposure. “If two people are defaulting in a 200-unit building,” Mr. Finkelstein said, “you can probably exercise some leniency. But it’s more problematic in a 40-unit building, even though it probably won’t kill you. You’ve got to evaluate your risk. If you know someone has a very low mortgage and there’s a lot of equity, you can cut them a little slack, because you can collect if there’s a foreclosure.”

While all condo buildings share vulnerabilities putting them at greater risk than co-ops to defaulting owners, condos of recent vintage appear to be in the greatest peril. For starters, these buildings often have less-experienced boards to navigate a crisis.

“The fear is much more acute in newer buildings than in established condominiums,” said Mr. Kuperberg, the managing agent, whose company has helped about 40 buildings open in the past three years. “There’s a greater likelihood that many apartments were sold for more than they’re worth today. And newer buildings have many people who bought with no-income-verification loans and very relaxed criteria. They also have younger owners who may be less established.”

What’s more, many of these overleveraged, less well established owners are among the several hundred thousand who bought under the 421-a tax abatement program. As the 10-year abatements phase out in steps every two years, the recipients experience increasingly drastic tax increases — which many had been counting on income gains to offset.

Consider the following hypothetical situation, provided by Paul J. Korngold, a real estate lawyer in Manhattan, which he said was consistent with many Manhattan units selling in the $1 million to $2 million range under the 421-a program. What starts out as a $1,214 annual tax bill climbs to $4,613 in the third year, $8,012 in the fifth year, $11,411 in the seventh year and $18,209 when the abatement expires.

But those numbers assume that the city doesn’t raise assessed values or tax rates. Factoring in what Mr. Korngold called a historically conservative 3 percent combined average increase, the unit owner who begins with a $1,214 annual tax bill owes $10,046 in the fifth year and a staggering $32,887 when the abatement expires.

Nearly 300,000 condo units were constructed under the program in the five boroughs from 2002 through 2007, according to the Department of Finance. That figure includes 132,431 units in Manhattan, where about 22,000 owners are in their fourth year of the program, 31,000 are in their fifth or sixth, and 12,000 are in their seventh. Because 421-a purchases were concentrated in a limited number of buildings, they are potentially destabilizing to these buildings in a down economy.

Mr. Kuperberg sketched out a second chain of events, this one pertaining to new buildings with many unsold units. It unfolds like this: Unable to sell half the units in a building, a struggling developer stops paying common charges and defaults on obligations to the lender. Foreclosure by the lender may take years, while individual unit owners effectively wind up paying double their normal common charges. This pushes some owners, themselves struggling, into default. Meanwhile, they are trapped — unable to sell, even at a steep loss, because most mortgage lenders won’t lend to potential buyers in a building where half the units are in default.

“That is a death spiral that could push a building into bankruptcy,” Mr. Kuperberg said. “You basically have a building unable to meet its operating expenses.”

Once the lender succeeds in foreclosing on the developer, there may not be enough money to cover the lender costs and unpaid common charges, forcing the unit owners to permanently swallow the loss. And while the lender must pay carrying costs going forward, it may decide not to throw good money after bad and instead dump the units at auction. The investors who buy them may act against the building’s best interests — renting them out cheaply (introducing a transient population that, among other things, inflicts more wear and tear) and electing boards who defer maintenance and refuse to make improvements.

“We work with a building that’s about 50 percent sold and the developer is gone — they lost all their money and they weren’t able to sell,” said one managing agent who asked to remain anonymous out of concern for the impact on property values in the building. “The lender took over and pays the common charges but doesn’t talk to us and won’t return our calls. If you’re running a building and 50 percent of the ownership doesn’t give you direction, that’s a problem. But I’m really nervous about what happens if the lender sells into the vulture market.”

Even condo boards in fully sold buildings have begun to contemplate the once unthinkable: slashing the very amenities that defined the recent boom.

“The boards are starting to talk about cutting things that might be considered a little excessive,” said Leslie Bogen Winkler, the vice president and director of management at Penmark Realty, a property management firm that has opened 50 condo buildings in the last three and a half years. “They may reduce health-club hours and maybe scale back breakfast. The biggest amenities that are costly are the health club with a swimming pool. It can run up to $200,000 to $400,000, depending on the size, hours open and operator.”

Staff cuts may also be in the offing at some buildings, though union contracts present significant hurdles. Moreover, said J. Brian Peters, the senior managing director of property management for Rose Associates, which owns or manages about 20,000 apartments in New York, “you can cut positions, but at a certain level that’s devaluing the product. And it’s the best product that’s going to survive the easiest in this downturn. We’re really more focused on increasing revenue.”

To that end, condo boards are considering adopting flip taxes, increasing alteration fees and bumping up sublet fees. They are also easing restrictions on the length of sublets so that strapped owners unable to sell their units can more easily rent them out.

Then again, other condos have the luxury of spare cash and might actually come out ahead in the downturn, Mr. Kuperberg said. “The recession can be a good opportunity to buy capital improvements and do upgrades,” he explained, “because contractors don’t have a lot of work and material costs are way down. It’s an opportunity to invest not only in cosmetic things like the lobby but in infrastructure that could reduce operating costs.”

Construction Industry Counts on Oh BAMA

Hopes for 2009 Rest with Economic Stimulus Plan???? 

As the economy slowed last year, the commercial-building unit of Kokosing Construction Co. had $130 million in projects -- a year's worth of revenue for the division -- halted in a three-week stretch. But now, with the prospect of a massive public-spending package by the Obama administration, the Ohio-based contractor is out recruiting workers.

"I told my managers that based on the expectation of a stimulus plan, we should continue interviewing people at colleges, hoping to have work for them by the time they graduate in the spring," says Brian Burgett, president and chief executive of Kokosing, a family-owned firm in Fredericktown, Ohio, that has built highways and industrial facilities for half a century.

After a rough year on the ground and in the stock market, engineering and construction companies are eager for the financial tap to be reopened. As the incoming administration assembles its stimulus plan, many contractors are lobbying hard for projects that will spend money fast rather than focusing on longer-term environmental and smart-growth policy goals.

That is largely because the industry has had steep job losses and foresees more bloodletting this year unless the government applies shock treatment to the economy. In December, construction accounted for 101,000 lost jobs, or nearly one-fifth of all U.S. jobs, capping a year in which the sector shed 632,000 jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employment in nonresidential and heavy-engineering construction shrank by 7% and 9%, respectively.

The Associated General Contractors of America, the country's largest trade association of nonresidential builders, recently polled its members and found that, barring a change in the business climate, expected layoffs could cut construction employment by 30% this year.

 

If a stimulus package included funding for infrastructure projects, however, some 85% of the survey's respondents said they wouldn't lay off workers and in fact would hire more.

The contractors association has submitted a white paper to the presidential transition team and to Congress that outlines the economic benefits for all types of infrastructure and emphasizes road and bridge work.

Mr. Burgett of Kokosing, who hopes to add fresh college graduates to his payroll, notes that Ohio has identified $1 billion in highway projects that could be started by June. Repairs to a bridge in Cleveland and upgrading an Interstate highway junction, not to mention the state's crumbling sewer lines, mean that "there is just an immense amount of work," he says.

Highlighting the industry's holding pattern, though, Mr. Burgett has put all equipment orders on hold until the stimulus package clarifies the environment. Typically, he orders $35 million of equipment a year.

Stephen Sandherr, chief executive of the contractors association, says there are some $64 billion of approved "shovel ready" transportation projects. The imperative to spend big and spend fast creates a potential clash between some contractors and proponents of environmentally friendly policies that President-elect Barack Obama espouses. "If the objective is to get things out quickly ... it would be counterproductive to add smart-growth requirements to any of these projects," Mr. Sandherr says.

The public-relations battle is on for portraying major infrastructure projects -- whether or not they are part of the stimulus plan -- in the greenest possible light. Shaw Group Inc., a Baton Rouge, La., engineering firm, has attracted investors' interest after firming up a $4 billion nuclear power-plant contract.

"With the importance that is being placed on developing new sources of clean energy, we are anticipating a nuclear renaissance that will assist in reinvigorating the U.S. economy," says Gentry Brann, director of corporate communications at Shaw.

Company executives last week said they also are well positioned for levee, environmental remediation and other potential infrastructure work in a stimulus plan. The company is adding about 1,000 jobs to its 26,000-strong work force.

Contractors point out that their work is often subject to increasingly stringent environmental regulations. "A lot of the stimulus [spending] will go to projects that are green at some level," says J. Doug Pruitt, chairman and chief executive of Sundt Cos. in Tempe, Ariz.

Don Weaver, vice president of Weaver Bailey Contractors Inc. in El Paso, Ark., says, "The highway industry doesn't get a lot of credit, but we're one of the biggest recyclers."

David Goldberg, communications director for Transportation for America, a nonprofit coalition of transit, housing and urban-planning groups, counters that "the real issue is whether we are creating more car dependence and oil dependence." He and other smart-growth advocates agree that road and bridge repair can be an effective use of quick stimulus money.

"We also want to make sure that for the longer term, we give ourselves a minute to think about the infrastructure we need for the post-oil-dependent economy," he says

In addition to highway maintenance, Transportation for America supports funding mass-transit authorities to preserve jobs and investment in rail, bicycle and pedestrian facilities that expand transportation options.

Write to Jonathan Karp at jonathan.karp@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page C10

Apartments Try to Stay Afloat

By PRABHA NATARAJAN

The rapid reversal of fortunes in commercial real estate is taking down yet another sector: apartment complexes.

Owners and developers of multifamily buildings are trying to stay afloat as the deteriorating economy and escalating job losses create difficulties in raising rents and shortfalls in projected revenues from these buildings.

While sharp declines in retail and office sectors of commercial real estate have commanded attention in recent months, some analysts say deterioration in the multifamily sector is quickly catching up.

A downturn in this sector also drags in housing mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which are already hurting from losses in subprime and other risky home loans. Together, the two mortgage giants have nearly $200 billion of these loans on their books.

"On a broader scale, these loans are performing well relative to other segments in the market," said David Cardwell, vice president of capital markets at the National Multi Housing Council, a Washington group representing apartment owners. "But conventional wisdom on apartments is that it follows the trend in jobs. It takes a few months for job losses to trickle into the rental market, as people double up in apartments or move in with their folks."

Last week, the government reported that the U.S. jobless rate rose 0.4 percentage point to 7.2% for December. Less than a year ago, the rate stood at just 5%.

Much of the multifamily sector's problems center on troubles in converting apartments to condominiums, as is the case in Miami, or on the challenges in converting rent-controlled units to market-rate apartments, as in New York's Manhattan.

In Florida, California, Arizona and Nevada, the flood of unsold condominiums entering the apartment market and is lowering rents in those areas, Barclays Capital analysts say. That has resulted in lower revenues for owners, which in some cases is making it more difficult to keep up with mortgage payments.

Meanwhile, in New York, aggressive revenue projections and poor underwriting have dragged some recently sold large properties into trouble.

For instance, the $222.5 million loan taken by Rockpoint Group and Stellar Management to purchase the Riverton Apartments was transferred to special servicing in August as the buyers warned of an imminent default of the loan. By December, they had fallen behind in their mortgage payments. The 1,228-unit rent-controlled complex in Harlem is converting to market-rent units at a much slower pace than expected, according to a Moody's Investors Service report.

At the time of the loan securitization in 2007, reserves of $48.3 million were set aside for any shortfalls in debt service and property renovation. By September, the reserves had fallen to $10.8 million.

Similarly, at the Peter Cooper Village-Stuyvesant Town property on Manhattan's East Side, only 37% of the units were converted to market rents as of September, compared with 28.5% at the time of the loan securitization, according to Moody's. In 2006, at the time of the purchase by Tishman Speyer and Blackrock Realty Advisors, nearly half of the apartments were expected to be converted by 2008. The loan's $590 million reserve had dwindled to $200 million by September, which is expected to be depleted by the end of the third quarter of this year.

In November, the delinquency rate on securitized loans to apartment and condominium properties rose to 1.9%, a sharp jump from the 0.9% at the start of the year, according to Real-point LLC, a Horsham, Pa., rating firm that analyzes commercial-property mortgages and financing. Realpoint will have December data available at the end of this month.

Delinquent multifamily loans now add up to $3.17 billion and make up nearly 45% of the delinquencies affecting the nearly $1 trillion commercial mortgage-backed securities, Realpoint research shows.

At Fannie Mae, serious delinquency rates on multifamily loans doubled to 0.21% in October 2008 from 0.1% in January.

Write to Prabha Natarajan at prabha.natarajan@dowjones.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page C11

 

 

 

Downturn Ends Building Boom in New York

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY

Published: December 26, 2008 New York Times

Nearly $5 billion in development projects in New York City have been delayed or canceled because of the economic crisis, an extraordinary body blow to an industry that last year provided 130,000 unionized jobs, according to numbers tracked by a local trade group.

 The setbacks for development — perhaps the single greatest economic force in the city over the last two decades — are likely to mean, in the words of one researcher, that the landscape of New York will be virtually unchanged for two years.

“There’s no way to finance a project,” said the researcher, Stephen R. Blank of the Urban Land Institute, a nonprofit group.

Charles Blaichman is not about to argue with that assessment. Looking south from the eighth floor of a half-finished office tower on 14th Street on a recent day, Mr. Blaichman pointed to buildings he had developed in the meatpacking district. But when he turned north to the blocks along the High Line, once among the most sought-after areas for development, he surveyed a landscape of frustration: the planned sites of three luxury hotels, all stalled by recession.

Several indicators show that developers nationwide have also been affected by the tighter lending markets. The growth rate for construction and land development loans shrunk drastically this year — to 0.08 percent through September, compared with 11.3 percent for all of 2007 and 25.7 percent in 2006, according to data tracked by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

And developers who have loans are missing payments. The percentage of loans in default nationwide jumped to 7.3 percent through September 2008, compared with 1 percent in 2007, according to data tracked by Reis Inc., a New York-based real estate research company.

New York’s development world is rife with such stories as developers who have been busy for years are killing projects or scrambling to avoid default because of the credit crunch.

Mr. Blaichman, who has built two dozen projects in the past 20 years, is struggling to borrow money: $370 million for the three hotels, which include a venture with Jay-Z, the hip-hop mogul. A year ago, it would have seemed a reasonable amount for Mr. Blaichman. Not now.

“Even the banks who want to give us money can’t,” he said.

The long-term impact is potentially immense, experts said. Construction generated more than $30 billion in economic activity in New York last year, said Louis J. Coletti, the chief executive of the Building Trades Employers’ Association. The $5 billion in canceled or delayed projects tracked by Mr. Coletti’s association include all types of construction: luxury high-rise buildings, office renovations for major banks and new hospital wings. Mr. Coletti’s association, which represents 27 contractor groups, is talking to the trade unions about accepting wage cuts or freezes. So far there is no deal.

Not surprisingly, unemployment in the construction industry is soaring: in October, it was up by more than 50 percent from the same period last year, labor statistics show.

Experience does not seem to matter. Over the past 15 years, Josh Guberman, 48, developed 28 condo buildings in Brooklyn and Manhattan, many of them purchased by well-paid bankers. He is cutting back to one project in 2009.

Donald Capoccia, 53, who has built roughly 4,500 condos and moderate-income housing units in all five boroughs, took the day after Thanksgiving off, for the first time in 20 years, because business was so slow. He is shifting his attention to projects like housing for the elderly on Staten Island, which the government seems willing to finance.

Some of their better known and even wealthier counterparts are facing the same problems. In August, Deutsche Bank started foreclosure proceedings against William S. Macklowe over his planned project at the former Drake Hotel on Park Avenue. Kent M. Swig, Mr. Macklowe’s brother-in-law, recently shut down the sales office for a condo tower planned for 25 Broad Street after his lender, Lehman Brothers, declared bankruptcy in September. Several commercial and residential brokers said they were spending nearly half their days advising developers who are trying to find new uses for sites they fear will not be profitable.

“That rug has been pulled out from under their feet,” said David Johnson, a real estate broker with Eastern Consolidated who was involved with selling the site for the proposed hotel to Mr. Blaichman, Jay-Z and their business partners for $66 million, which included the property and adjoining air rights. Mr. Johnson said that because many banks are not lending, the only option for many developers is to take on debt from less traditional lenders like foreign investors or private equity firms that charge interest rates as high as 20 percent.

That doesn’t mean that all construction in New York will grind to a halt immediately. Mr. Guberman is moving forward with one condo tower at 87th Street and Broadway that awaits approval for a loan; he expects it will attract buyers even in a slowing economy. Mr. Capoccia is trying to finish selling units at a Downtown Brooklyn condominium project, and is slowly moving ahead on applying for permits for an East Village project.

Mr. Blaichman, 54, is keeping busy with four buildings financed before the slowdown. He has found fashion and advertising firms to rent space in his tower at 450 West 14th Street and buyers for two downtown condo buildings. He recently rented a Lower East Side building to the School of Visual Arts as a dorm.

Mr. Blaichman had success in Greenwich Village and the meatpacking district, where he developed the private club SoHo House, the restaurant Spice Market and the Theory store. He had similar hopes for the area along the High Line, where he bought properties last year when they were fetching record prices.

An art collector, he considered the area destined for growth because of its many galleries and its proximity to the park being built on elevated railroad tracks that have given the area its name. The park, which extends 1.45 miles from Gansevoort Street to 34th Street, is expected to be completed in the spring.

Other developers have shown that buyers will pay high prices to be in the area. Condo projects designed by well-known architects like Jean Nouvel and Annabelle Selldorf have been eagerly anticipated. In recent months, buyers have paid $2 million for a two-bedroom unit and $3 million for a three-bedroom at Ms. Selldorf’s project, according to Streeteasy.com, a real estate Web site.

“It’s one of the greatest stretches of undeveloped areas,” Mr. Blaichman said. “I still think it’s going to take off.”

In August 2007, Mr. Blaichman bought the site and air rights of a former Time Warner Cable warehouse. He thought the neighborhood needed its first full-service five-star hotel, in contrast to the many boutique hotels sprouting up downtown. So with his partners, Jay-Z and Abram and Scott Shnay, he envisioned a hotel with a pool, gym, spa and multiple restaurants under a brand called J Hotels. But since his mortgage brokers started shopping in late summer for roughly $200 million in financing, they have only one serious prospect for a lender.

For now, he is seeking an extension on the mortgage — monthly payments are to begin in the coming months — and trying to rent the warehouse. (He currently has no income from the property.)

It is perhaps small comfort that his fellow developers are having as many problems getting loans. Shaya Boymelgreen had banks “pull back” recently on financing for a 107-unit rental tower the developer is building at 500 West 23rd Street, according to Sara Mirski, managing director of development for Boymelgreen Developers. The half-finished project looked abandoned on two recent visits, but Ms. Mirski said that construction will continue. Banks have “invited” the developer to reapply for a loan next year and have offered interim bridge loans for up to $30 million.

Mr. Blaichman cuts a more mellow figure than many other developers do. He avoids the real estate social scene, tries to turn his cellphone off after 6 p.m. and plays folk guitar in his spare time.

For now, Mr. Blaichman seems stoic about his plight. At a diner, he polished off a Swiss-cheese omelet and calmly noted that he had no near-term way to pay off his debts. He exercises several times a week and tells his three children to curb their shopping even as he regularly presses his mortgage bankers for answers.

“I sleep pretty well,” Mr. Blaichman said. “There’s nothing you can do in the middle of the night that will help your projects.”

But even when the lending market improves — in months, or years — restarting large-scale projects will not be a quick process. A freeze in development, in fact, could continue well after the recession ends.

Mr. Blank of the Urban Land Institute said he has taken to giving the following advice to real estate executives: “We told them to take up golf.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 31, 2008 
An article on Saturday about the end of the building boom in New York City referred incorrectly to the family relationship between the developers William S. Macklowe, whose planned project at the former Drake Hotel is in foreclosure, and Kent M. Swig, who shut down the sales office for a condominium tower on Broad Street after his lender, Lehman Brothers, declared bankruptcy. Mr. Swig is Mr. Macklowe’s brother-in-law, not his son-in-law.