European Lenders Still Cleaning Up Boom Year Mess in US
Bloomberg reports: Exemplifying foreign lenders’ hubris in the US during the boom years is the case of Snowmass Village near Aspen, Colorado. In 2007, Germany-based Hypo Real Estate Holding AG provided $520.0 million in construction financing to the developers of the property, which has become the second largest ski resort in America. Since that time, the global economic crisis has burned foreign lenders who charged into the US during the property bubble; Hype has since collapsed under its outstanding obligations and was seized in 2009 by the German government. Construction at Snowmass Village remains incomplete to this day, with some planned condos half built and wrapped in plastic awaiting their fate.
Overall, Hypo lent over $8.0 billion to US developers over the past decade, while all foreign lending to US commercial real estate reached $35.0 billion as of July 2010. According to Real Capital, more than $15.0 billion of these loans, including Hypo’s significant portion of US holdings, have become “troubled” – or classified as delinquent, defaulted, foreclosed, or in bankruptcy.
Real Capital analyst Ben Thypin iterated to Bloomberg that similar to the Snowmass/Hypo tie-up, “European banks enthusiastically increased their US commercial real estate lending during the boom…many of these banks are now being forced to dispose of non-core assets…” Lending firms such as Hypo or Bayerische Landesbank, Germany’s second-largest state-owned lender, have been provided with a multi-billion dollar bailout by the German government. This, according to Bloomberg however, has provided these dependent lenders with three main options: “The can keep overseeing the loans and manage workouts on their own; sell them for cash, probably at a substantial discount; or partner with private managers, as the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has done…” Lenders seem keen to avoid a fire sale, though that remains one of the ultimate options.
View the full article on Bloomberg: European Lenders Still Cleaning Up Boom Year Mess in US
Posted by: Nina Turner