From the Daily Mail: "Commercial real estate implosion: Blackstone is desperately trying to shift Manhattan office tower at HALF price after 26-storey building's value tumbled from $605MILLION to $150MILLION." From the article:
The world's biggest private equity fund has become the latest victim of America's hollowed out office culture after it marketed its landmark New York building for a quarter of what it paid.
Blackstone paid around $600 million for the 26-storey tower at 1740 Broadway in 2014 but is now offering it to anyone willing to pay the $150million left on the mortgage.
It comes just a week after Shorenstein put the 62-storey Aon Center in Los Angeles on the market for $153.5 million, down from the $269 million it paid ten years ago.
Persistent high mortgage rates and the millions of Americans still working from home have been blamed for the collapse in prices and an office vacancy rate reaching a record 19.6 percent in major cities earlier this month.
'I think this is an existential moment,' said RXR real estate boss Scott Rechler.
'This post-COVID world of higher interest rates, the changing nature of how people work and live, we're not going back to where we were, and it's going to be turbulent.'
Good thing we had all those Covid shutdowns. The article continues:
The collapse has been pronounced in the biggest cities with DC facing a 21.1 percent vacancy rate and San Francisco's 34 percent.
It has led to a 35 percent fall in office prices from their peak in early 2022 and left banks vulnerable to billions of dollars in shaky loans.
About $117 billion worth is expected to be due this year and needs to be repaid or refinanced, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.
Economists last month found 40 per cent of office loans on bank balance sheets were underwater - owing more than the property is worth.
Smaller regional banks who loaned the money to buy them could themselves be at risk if the loans default as they are not big enough to handle the losses.
Fill it with illegals.
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