CRE

Luxury-condo builder Extell Development Co. said it obtained a construction loan for a lower Manhattan project after months of delays, and bought more time to get financing for a planned tower on Billionaires' Row in Midtown.

The first reboot of S&P 500 Index group weights in almost two decades has arrived, shaking up stock portfolios and conjuring an industry out of real estate investment trusts that will infuse at least one lightweight ETF with sudden riches.

Plenty of banks have ended their federal loss-share deals early, but despite the incentives to wind them down, plenty more still have these crisis-era arrangements in place. It may be due to varying deadlines, mistakes calculating loan values or worries that they still might need the coverage for home equity lines.

In just a few years, a popular mall with high-end anchor stores and boutique retail tenants can fall into substandard property condition, leaving commercial mortgage bond investors with outsized losses on their exposure to these properties.

Fitch has taken a slightly dimmer view of Midland Loan Services' ability to workout distressed commercial mortgages.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency is seeking to make it easier for Federal Home Loan Banks to accept certain kinds of collateral for advances.

The latest lending figures show just how prodigious banks' shift from construction to C&I loans has been since the crisis. Yet a hard look at C&I credits, especially their loss rates, raises questions about whether they are safer.

As the volume of maturing commercial mortgages has spiked, so has the number of loans transferred to special servicing when they fail to pay off.

The first commercial mortgage-backed security to comply with "skin in the game" requirements was extremely well received. Market participants credit the way the large banks sponsoring the deal retained the risk – a strategy unavailable to nonbank lenders.

Macy's decision to shutter another 100 of its department stores could impair some $3.64 billion of securitized commercial mortgages, according to Morningstar Credit Ratings.

The impressive loan growth in the second quarter is surprising in an economy that grew by 1.2% in the second quarter and by only 0.8% in the first quarter.

United Community and Wells Fargo are among the banks building platforms to lend to senior-care facilities. Demographics suggest the business should grow significantly in coming years.

The biggest change in banking in the last 60 years is the shift in balance sheets from business lending to real estate finance and therefore more risk tied to volatile real estate prices.

By buying EverBank Financial, the insurance and retirement savings behemoth will gain billions of dollars in low-cost deposits and access to many new lending products that it can offer to millions of clients.

Under pressure from regulators to beef up risk management in commercial real estate lending, banks are using new software tools to improve analysis.

Ares Commercial Real Estate's net income slipped slightly in the second quarter as the company prepares to sell its mortgage banking subsidiary.

Regulators' recent warnings on emerging risks with commercial real estate indicate banks have reverted to CRE practices that got them in hot water once before.

Lending standards for most business and residential real estate loans as well as subprime consumer loans are tighter than the 10-year average, according to a survey of senior bank loan officers released by the Federal Reserve Board.

Carver Bancorp in New York is dealing with a new set of challenges just months after being released from a longstanding enforcement order. The company’s woes highlight the challenges for banks with narrowly constrained business models.

Suffolk Bancorp in New York, which recently agreed to sell to People's United Financial, discouraged several suitors from bidding due to concerns about concentrations of commercial real estate loans at those banks. The disclosures highlight the challenges that banks with heavy CRE exposure could face — as buyers or sellers — if they want to do deals.