Commercial Real Estate Restructuring Revolution: Strategies, Tranche Warfare, and Prospects for Recovery (Wiley Finance)
Commercial Real Estate Restructuring Revolution: Strategies, Tranche Warfare, and Prospects for Recovery (Wiley Finance)
How to plan for the commercial real estate collapseEncompassing apartment, office, retail, hospitality, warehouse, manufacturing, and flex or R & D buildings, commercial real estate (CRE) investment in the U.S. totaled .4 trillion at the end of 2008. As noted in the February 2010 Congressional Oversight Panel Report, .4 trillion of CRE debt is coming due by 2014 and half of the CRE projects securing such debt are underwater. Commercial Real Estate Restructuring Revolution: Strategies, Tranche Warfare, and Prospects for Recovery looks at how we got into this mess–impacts of the housing crisis, debt structures, lender-borrower collusion, and bankruptcy abuses–and offers possible solutions to the CRE crisis. Along the way, author Stephen Meister:
• Discusses how CRE value losses are being driven by investors’ risk adjusted cap rates, not just poorer market fundamentals
• Discusses strategies and emerging trends in CRE foreclosures, including forced lend
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A book about commercial real estate squeezed between two rants,
The core of this book is a useful look at the changes in commercial real estate finance from the point of view of a lawyer who works in the heart of the system. Meister clearly knows a lot and the middle chapters, particularly chapters 2-9, will offer most readers a fairly clear assessment of the history and current state of commercial real estate finance. The volume includes includes some very useful information on both the strategies that brought the market to its current state and those that are being invoked to postpone the day of reckoning. Interspersed with this overview are a number of graphic stories from Meister’s own experience. In fact, I would have been happy to have had even more of those.
On page 60 Meister writes, “Predicting the recovery of the CRE markets therefore requires making predictions about future government policies, an endeavor more reliant on the skill set belonging to a political scientist than an economist.” If only Meister had taken his own advice rather than taking it upon himself to explain the politics of the collapse of the home mortgage markets. Sadly, too much of the book is taken up by Meister’s hatred of the Obama administration and policies designed to increase minority rates of home ownership, particularly the Preface, the first chapter and many of the last chapters of the book. There is a strong body of research at this point that disproves his claims, including the work of Dan Immergluck–which Meister cites, but only when it helps make his point. Fortunately, most of the author’s hyperbole is limited to the chapters that are not focused on the main topic of the book, which is commercial real estate.
I was excited to find an accessible book on the current state of the commercial mortgage markets and pleased with the parts that addressed the topic as described in the title. The rest of the book should have been saved for a more appropriate venue, perhaps a separate, more political work, on GSEs and public policy.
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|The Most Important Real Estate Book,
As a professional who has a long history in real estate, I have read many books, most of which have been banal and self-serving. Therefore, I was pleasantly surprised to read Stephen Meister’s book, Commercial Real Estate Restructuring Revolution. It is brilliant, insightful, thought-provoking and full of essential information that anyone interested in the real estate market needs to read. The book not only analyzes the contemporary real estate market,but it also provides brilliant insights into what the future holds. Mr. Meister is obviously one of the great authorities on real estate. As one of the foremost real estate attorneys in the United States, representing some of the biggest names in real estate, his insights are based upon years of practical experience. It is no wonder that Donald Trump and Larry Kudlow have praised this book to the heights. I can say, without reservation, that it is the most valuable real estate book on my bookshelves of real estate books.
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|Tour de force,
This book is a must read for any real estate professional or for any person who wants to understand what happened, what is happening, and what will happen in the commercial real estate world as a result of the credit crisis. Stephen Meister has combined his experience – he was a major player in many of the most notable real estate transactions and disputes that arose from the crisis – and his comprehensive understanding of real estate to take the reader through an entertaining and timely analysis of the commercial real estate finance arena.
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