Last week’s earnings reports from a few different REITs indicated that commercial office space and commercial lending have not fallen into the crisis the financial media has warned of. The fear in the markets is that low office space occupancy will lead to declining property values and commercial mortgage defaults.
Also, since commercial mortgages are almost exclusively adjustable, rising interest rates hurt commercial property owners with sometimes significant increases in the cost of servicing their debt.
There have been anecdotal stories of downtown office buildings remaining mostly empty post-pandemic. There also has been a couple of defaults on commercial loans. The question now is whether these will be isolated problems or indicate a larger issue with commercial property (especially office buildings) and commercial mortgage lenders.
This post originally appeared at Investors Alley.