NPR Talks About Commercial Real Estate

Here is the link:

Here is what I liked:

Making Lemonade

But in every crisis, there is also opportunity.

Michael Fay recently set up a new distressed property services group at Colliers Abood Wood-Fay, a real estate company in Miami. Fay got started in the business in the 1980s, helping the Resolution Trust Co. and other government agencies liquidate property during the savings and loan crisis. He sees many of the same opportunities emerging in this downturn.

With declining property values — plus rising vacancy rates — Fay says commercial landlords face tough decisions.

"Now that the music has stopped, there are a lot of people — banks, investors, lenders — [who] are caught with this way-overvalued property that has got highly leveraged land and it's gone into foreclosure," Fay says. "And now they're trying to sell it. And it's going for literally 40 cents, 50 cents, 30 cents on the dollar in some areas."

As bad as that is, it's not the biggest problem facing commercial real estate. What many commercial landlords worry about is the same thing bedeviling homeowners, businessmen and the economy at large: the lack of available credit.