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Will apartment property values be affected by uncertainty over the fate of Fannie and Freddie? Hessam Nadji, managing director of research and advisory services at Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Services, does not seem concerned, at this point at least. He tells MHN he does not think members of Congress can realistically propose to remove government support from the secondary mortgage market. “It will be a mistake,” he says. But Alabama’s Spencer Bachus, who is expected to be Barney Frank’s (D-Mass.) replacement as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said that the GSEs ought to be liquidated and…

The word is that special servicers are so inundated with defaulted loans that often, they can barely return the borrowers’ calls. Well, if you think there are a lot of loans defaulting currently, this is not even the peak year of CMBS loan maturities. According to data from reserach company Trepp, L.L.C., only $9.3 billion in CMBS loans are maturing this year—compared to $44.7 billion in 2011 and $57.6 billion in 2010! “The real refinancing hurdle for the market will not take place until the 2015 to 2017 time period,” says Paul Mancuso, vice president of product management. “During this…

The National Housing & Rehabilitation Association (NHRA) in association with the National Trust Community Investment Corp. has honored eight historic buildings in its annual awards ceremony. The properties are located in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Maryland, Kentucky and Iowa. The awards were presented at NHRA’s Fall Developers Forum. “It is a privilege to honor these innovators who are so skilled at preserving the charm and values of the past in their communities while at the same time providing housing and economic development that fulfill contemporary needs,” says Thom Amdur, executive director of NHRA. One of the winners was a…

There is now bubbling under the surface the possibility of another banking crisis, a home foreclosure-generated crisis. Big banks that face possible legal action from mortgage bond investors for improper mortgage documentation have seen their shares drop last week. There are fears they will be forced to buy back the mortgage bonds from the investors. The root of the problem: foreclosures have been improperly filed by the servicers, and/or servicers cannot produce the mortgage documents that they were required to keep. But there are calls for foreclosure moratoriums also because some homeowners are also being erroneously foreclosed on by the…

The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) has revised up its forecast for multifamily construction this year. “The better-than-expected mid-year improvement in multifamily housing production has been significant enough for NAHB to increase its forecast for 2010,” states NAHB. The trade group projects that 120,000 units (two-plus units) will be started in 2010. At the International Builders’ Show in January, NAHB had predicted fewer than 100,000 units in starts for this year. NAHB attributes the improved outlook to increased employment, pent-up household formation, and financial hurdles for buying homes. Of course, 120,000 units still represents a low level of new…

Jobs, jobs, jobs. Speaking to executives in the commercial real estate financing industry, I hear that the most important economic indicator for them is, without doubt, job growth. Job growth has to increase before the commercial real estate fundamentals can improve. If Tea Party candidates sweep the upcoming elections in November, will that bring about better job growth prospects for the economy? There are two courses of action one would think a Tea Party politician would want to implement immediately and radically: (1.) cutting taxes and (2.) cutting spending. Will cutting taxes and cutting government spending at a deep level bring about better job…

The more stringent rules HUD announced this summer for the FHA multifamily mortgage insurance program were no surprise. By the time the Mortgage Letter 2010-21 came out on July 6, the multifamily development and financing community already pretty much knew what the main points were going to be.   Among the biggest, and most contested, changes are the decrease in the required the Loan-to-Cost (LTC) from 90 percent to 83.3 percent, for the FHA 221(d)(4) program for market-rate new construction. The Debt Service Coverage ratio (DSC) has also been increased, to 1.20 percent from 1.11 percent. The new requirements make…

The high-power summit organized by the Treasury Department to discuss the future of Fannie and Freddie occurred this week, yesterday. It seems to be the tendency of 21st Century Big Money to have a ideological opposition to “Big Government.” But in this case, homeowners and renters are lucky because industry is coming out in favor of government support, as in government support for the mortgage finance system. Free Marketers are not so pro-Free Market when the government support also helps them. It is a fundamental fact of human society that certain things cannot be handled by the Free Market. And…