‘Zombie Offices’ Spell Trouble for Some Banks
www.nytimes.com
Bank tremors serve as a reminder: Just because a crisis hasn’t hit immediately doesn’t mean commercial real estate pain isn’t coming.

This is the real reason for companies wanting people back to the office.

All this talk about collaboration and team spirit is just the publicly given reason for wanting people back to the office.

The real reason is that now the owners of the buildings are losing money.

Cry me a river.

  • archomrade [he/him]English
    1•9 months ago

    It’s not really a ‘could’ spill over, it definitely would.

    A very high proportion of institutional investment is tied up in CRE. If enough defaults happen it might even be worse than 2008.

    Doesn’t mean we should tip the scales in favor of CRE or the banks, though. If it comes to pass, we should nationalize the assets and socialize retirement (more). If we didn’t have all our retirement accounts in private markets our exposure to this kind of error wouldn’t be so high.

    • phillaholicEnglish
      2•9 months ago

      Yea I was being as neutral as possible in my answer. I agree it absolutely would be worse than 2008. I don’t think nationalizing the assets are going to work in this environment. The best we can hope for is regulation, but in the specific situation no one really did anything wrong. A Global pandemic flipped norms on their head.

      • archomrade [he/him]English
        1•9 months ago

        but in the specific situation no one really did anything wrong

        Banks invested in over-leveraged positions and lost liquidity, loosing their client’s savings. If they want the benefit of privatized banking and reap the profits, they should be prepared to accept the losses. I don’t think that’s a controversial opinion.

        • phillaholicEnglish
          1•9 months ago

          There could be individual banks over-leveraged in commercial real estate, but those aren’t important. At this scale it’s large enough to cause a a major recession or crash. We’ve seen smaller banks fail recently.

          • archomrade [he/him]English
            1•9 months ago

            No, I’m making a generalized statement about privatized banking. If we are constantly socializing the losses when private banking makes a critical error, then we should be socializing the profit, too.

            If they end up causing a crash, I think it’s time we socialize the assets left over rather than ‘bailing them out’ for continued private operation. You suggested that nationalizing the assets would be too controversial in this environment, but I actually think intervening on behalf of private financial institutions and commercial real estate landlords would be more so.