I keep Looking For Positive Office Building Industry News But…

San Francisco Business Times January 19, 2024 Various headlines from just this one issue: First page, ‘The Coming Debt Wave’, Page 6, ‘Another S.F. Property Could Be Headed for Default’  about 140 Second St. in SF, ‘S.F. Trophy Onwers Buy Some Time’ regarding the 1.6 million square foot One Market which had gone into special servicing and now the loan’s maturity has been extended, but no mention of what was paid down or how long the extension was, and not an office, but ‘Hilton San Francisco Hotel Sees Loan Default’, on page 10 ‘Wells Fargo Sees More Real Estate Woes Ahead’, ‘T roubled loans for office buildings are spreading nationwide’ and finally on page 12, ‘The CMBA Debt Wave-Tens of billions of dollars in loans backed by commercial real estate are coming due over the next 18 months. Will the wave swamp the market -or reset it?’…my answer, yes, it will both swamp and reset the market. This will be a long challenging and painful road ahead for almost everyone in the office building industry (and some in the hotel industry as well)…there won’t be a magical button that gets pushed to bring everything back into the way it was pre-Covid in terms of pricing, office occupancy interest rates and lenders willingness to make office loans.  It won’t matter whom wins the election, or when interest rates begin to go down…there is still multiple tsumamis of loan defaults ahead that must be cleared out and cleaned up. Maybe if they pass a law outlawing working from home to force everyone back into the office…if it wasn’t for the darn high-speed internet and cloud storage to access files to allow working from home in the first place!