Bad debt tied to local commercial properties has yet to pile up on bank balance sheets, but that could change soon.
Though the delinquency rate for bank loans secured by income-producing real estate in the Chicago area edged higher in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, it remains well below the levels reached during the last recession. The local delinquency rate was 1.4 percent in the third quarter, up from 1.1 percent a year earlier but down from 1.5 percent in the second quarter, according to Trepp, a New York-based research firm.
The numbers paint a surprisingly rosy picture of the commercial real estate market, belying the gloomy narrative today of rising vacancies, falling rents and mounting distress.
But the picture may look better than it really is because of the CARES Act, the federal COVID-19 bailout passed in March. The law allowed banks to defer mortgage payments from borrowers without reporting the loans as past due. In reports that banks file with federal regulators, the loans appear current, but they’re really not.
Many payment deferrals end after 180 days, meaning bank loan delinquencies will likely rise in the fourth quarter, said Matthew Anderson, managing director in Trepp’s office in Oakland, Calif. But he doesn’t expect a repeat of the last real estate bust, when the local delinquency rate peaked at 7.7 percent.
“I don’t see numbers jumping up to previous crisis levels,” Anderson said.
The U.S. delinquency rate for commercial property loans by banks also is low: just 1.2 percent in the third quarter, up from 0.8 percent a year earlier, according to Trepp.
Banks may weather the current downtown better than the last one because they have limited exposure to two of the hardest-hit commercial property sectors: hotels and retail, Anderson said. And they’re in better shape today, having resisted the temptation to load up on marginal real estate debt like they did during the last cycle, he said.
“There weren’t really broad excesses anywhere, in contrast to the Great Recession,” he said. “Real estate was obviously overheated” back then.
Anderson expects the local delinquency rate to rise to 2 to 3 percent in the fourth quarter. The length of the recession will determine where it goes from there.
“If that continues for a long time, you could see the delinquency rate rising further,” Anderson said. “That’s the real question heading into 2021—what the economy looks like at that point.”
When it comes to the state of commercial real estate lending markets, the low bank delinquency rate tells only part of the story. Delinquencies on loans packaged into mortgage bonds—or commercial mortgage-backed securities, or CMBS—have soared since the beginning of the pandemic.
The Chicago-area CMBS delinquency rate was 8.3 percent in October, down from 10.3 percent in June but up from 1.9 percent in February, according to Trepp. The delinquency rate was 57 percent—really—for hotel loans and 21 percent for retail. The Palmer House Hilton in the Loop was hit with a $338 million foreclosure suit in August after defaulting on a CMBS loan.
A wave of foreclosure suits filed by banks against commercial landlords has yet to come. In one of the few recent big cases, Chicago-based First Midwest Bank sued to collect $23 million from the owner of the office space in a 41-story high-rise at 105 W. Adams St.
But the bank has given many of its real estate borrowers relief through the CARES Act. In a recent investor presentation, the bank’s parent, First Midwest Bancorp, reported that it granted payment deferrals on 88 percent of its hotel loan portfolio in the first of two 90-day periods this year. It granted deferrals on 45 percent of its hotel portfolio in the second 90-day period.
The bank also granted deferrals on 59 percent of its retail property loans in the first period and 12 percent in the second. The deferral rates for office, industrial and other commercial property dropped from 17 percent in the first 90 days to 3 percent in the second.
The recent news of the pending rollout of COVID-19 vaccines offers hope for landlords trying to hang on and avoid loan trouble. The question for many borrowers is whether the economic recovery will come fast enough.
“Having the vaccines is great,” Anderson said. “There’s a light at the end of the tunnel. But all that is going to take a while.”
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