Maybe it is time we start taking bankers at their word that commercial real estate wasn’t and isn’t a catastrophe waiting to happen. Maybe, just maybe, as they’ve been telling us for the last four consecutive quarters, there are serious risks but they are manageable and are being dealt with and disposed of.

Why, now?

Because third quarter commercial bank earnings reports released in the last week seem to back up that talk. Individually, there are definitely still banks in trouble. But collectively banks seem to be on the tail end of their commercial real estate troubles. Distressed loan levels have stabilized, the amount of new delinquencies is decreasing and more banks are beginning to push troubled assets back into the marketplace.

To view the entire article please Click Here

Florida’s unemployment rate rose to 11.9 percent in September, the third monthly increase in a row, state officials reported Friday morning.

The state lost 11,100 jobs over the month, led by a 7,000 drop in government jobs. But employment levels are still up 27,200 jobs compared to a year ago, according to the report from the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation. September marked the third consecutive month that the state’s job count is higher from year-ago comparisons after shedding jobs for three straight years.

To view the entire article please Click Here

Orlando’s hotel industry improved significantly last month during a historically slow time of year, with some areas of the market posting large gains in the number of rooms sold and average daily rates.

Hotels in the Orlando area filled 49.7 percent of their rooms on average during September, 12.3 percent better than the same month last year, according to the latest report from Smith Travel Research.

To view the entire article please Click Here

Add another commercial property type that is now on the path to recovery. The U.S. warehouse market joined the office market in clear recovery mode after logging another quarter of positive absorption and improving conditions as the national industrial vacancy rate edged down slightly for a second consecutive quarter.

Similar to its office market counterpart, the industrial real estate market is also seeing the pace of recovery vary quite a bit from market to market, according to CoStar Group’s Third Quarter 2010 Industrial Real Estate Review & & Outlook.

To view the entire article please Click Here

With more banks collapsing because of commercial real-estate lending, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is working on a new way to sell failed banks’ hard-to-value real-estate assets back to the private sector, according to people familiar with the matter.

Up until now, the FDIC has mostly sold soured property loans to investors in partnerships with the agency. These arrangements enticed private investors to buy distressed real-estate assets while giving taxpayers the opportunity to make money should the assets rise in value.

To view the entire article please Click Here

The Moody’s/REAL All Property Type Aggregate Index measured a 3.3% decrease in August, bringing the index to 105.37. This is the lowest recorded result since the beginning of the downturn, surpassing the old recession level low of 107.98, which occurred in October 2009. National prices are 7.6% below the value recorded last year. Since the peak in October 2007, prices have fallen 45.1%.

To view the entire article please Click Here

WASHINGTON, DC-The Center for Housing Policy, the Local Initiatives Support Corp. and the Urban Institute have released data on seriously delinquent–meaning 90 days or more overdue–mortgages for all 366 US metro areas. An analysis of 100 of the largest metropolitan areas found a 32% increase over a one-year period in the share of mortgages that are seriously delinquent. 

In March 2010, more than one in 10 mortgages (10.2%) in the 100 largest metropolitan areas were seriously delinquent–up from one in 13 mortgages (7.7%) 
in March 2009.

To view the entire article please Click Here