Technology

I'm a union commercial electrician where I spent a decade building and improving tenant spaces in commercial towers in Seattle and Bellevue. There's a huge dip in our work now that there aren't high rises being occupied. I'd like people to work from home, but my blue collar job can't be done from home. If we can change what these buildings are used for I wouldn't be worried.

Google here in Fremont area on the other hand is expanding their space by occupying a larger foot print with a smaller work force per square foot. That's a good way to keep us working.

Oh no.

Anyway.

Mirror for folks on voyager: https://web.archive.org/web/20240208172049/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/08/business/economy/commercial-real-estate-banking-industry.html/

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Employees sent to work from home at the start of the pandemic have not fully returned, a situation that, combined with high interest rates, is wiping out value in a major class of commercial real estate.

The past week brought a taste of the brewing problems when New York Community Bank’s stock plunged after the lender disclosed unexpected losses on real estate loans tied to both office and apartment buildings.

When a string of banks failed last spring — partly because of rising interest rates that had reduced the value of their assets — analysts fretted that commercial real estate could trigger a wider set of problems.

In other cases, banks are using short-term extensions rather than taking over struggling buildings or renewing now-unworkable leases — hoping that interest rates will come down, which would help lift property values, and that workers will return.

The value of bank assets has taken a beating amid higher Fed rates, Mr. Piskorski and Ms. Jiang found in their paper, which means that mounting commercial real estate losses could leave many institutions in bad shape.

“Commercial real estate is an area that we’ve long been aware could create financial stability risks or losses in the banking system, and this is something that requires careful supervisory attention,” Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said during congressional testimony this week.

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