Commercial Investment

To borrow a biblical expression, it may be easier these days to pass a camel through the eye of a needle than it is to get a commercial real estate loan.

Despite federal bail-out money intended to stimulate lending, loans for investment in office buildings, shopping centers, industrial sites and raw land are increasingly rare, the result of falling values and other factors.

Commercial property owners and mortgage brokers say the lack of capital also stems, in part, from new federal regulations intended to staunch foreclosures and halt the aggressive lending practices of the early 2000s.

“It’s ironic that the federal government put all the stimulus money into banks, while another branch of the government is over-regulating capital reserve requirements on banks,” said Brett Hutchens, chief executive officer of Casto Lifestyle Properties, a Sarasota development firm that owns shopping and lifestyle centers nationwide.

“The same government is providing both the carrot and the stick to lenders,” Hutchens said. “It’s created gridlock and made lending and borrowing very, very difficult.”

“It’s a Catch-22 the government has imposed,” said N.J. Olivieri, president and owner of Sarasota-based Horizon Mortgage Corp. “They tell the banks to make loans but then tell the FDIC to tighten the restrictions on new lending.”

New regulations notwithstanding, lenders say the pullback in available credit is appropriate, given the shaky economy.

“Banks are simply not looking to take extended risk today,” said Charlie Murphy, chief executive of the Bank of Commerce, a Sarasota lender, and a board member of the Florida Bankers Association, a trade group.

“It’s not unusual for banks, in bad economic times, to tighten their lending standards,” Murphy said. “And regulators are not too happy these days about allocating new money to commercial real estate.”

Other forces

Banks have been hurt, as well, by other forces beyond their control.

Most notable has been the exit from the lending market by risk-averse insurers and pension funds, typically a key source for permanent mortgages.

That has crippled commercial real estate owners seeking to refinance or simply shift loans from banks, as is usually done.

That, in turn, has forced banks to keep mortgages on their books, which further limits their ability to cut new loans — especially in the construction and real estate sectors.

The precipitous drop in commercial real estate values — combined with falling rental rates on nearly every property segment — represents the largest factor in the dearth of lending, however.

Retail rental rates have fallen by as much as half, and many tenants remain unable to pay rent at all, part of the fallout from the longest economic recession since the Great Depression.

Vacancies, too, from super-regional malls to neighborhood-anchored strip centers, have risen dramatically.

“In many cases, shopping centers are full, but not all of the tenants are paying rent,” Olivieri said. “Landlords don’t want their space to go dark, so they’re letting them stay put.”

Office rents have also fallen, in Southwest Florida and nationwide — by 20 percent to 30 percent in some cases.

“In some submarkets, there is an even greater devaluation of rents,” said John Harshman, president of Harshman & Co., a Sarasota commercial real estate brokerage firm.

The lack of income, and decrease in values, has forced many property owners to come up with new equity on loans to satisfy lenders’ re-appraisals, investors say, even on performing mortgages.

Regulators, too, are calling on banks to beef up reserves and loan coverages by thinning loan-to-value ratios.

Restrictions

Meanwhile, the few commercial real estate loans that are available come with excessive restrictions, including onerous equity requirements and repayment schedules, which are also the result of new federal regulations.

In many cases, lenders that once required investors to put down 20 percent or 30 percent equity are demanding twice those percentages — and borrowers’ personal guarantees — before they will consider loaning money.

“We’ve gone from having an unsecured line of credit, on a performing loan, to getting a commitment for just one-year from the bank, and the terms are complex,” said Andy Dorr, a senior vice president with Githler Development Co., a Sarasota real estate investment and development firm.

As a result, Horizon and others have begun lining up equity partners for developers or investors, Olivieri said.

At the same time, Dorr said, the costs associated with commercial real estate borrowing — appraisals, origination fees, legal expenses and environmental analysis — have increased in many cases.

The hiked fees and the lack of new capital are both tied, investors and lenders say, to the fear that a commercial real estate meltdown is in the offing. Already, development giants such as mall owner General Growth Properties have defaulted on commercial real estate loans — a signal to some analysts that another wave of foreclosures is ahead. Next year alone, hundreds of billions of commercial real estate loans, many of which were cut during the real estate boom and required interest-only payments, will mature or come due nationwide. When that occurs, many predict, defaults will spike.

“Everyone keeps saying that commercial real estate is the next shoe to drop,” Hutchens said. “Well, I have to agree: It’s about to drop.”

The answer, industry experts say, can be summed up in a single word: Jobs.

“We have to stimulate the economy with more jobs and small business,” Murphy said. “When we have jobs, then businesses expand and the economy cycles upward. The opposite is also true, and it creates a vicious, self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“People have to go back to work,” Olivieri said. “Specifically, in construction.

“Construction has always led the way out of recession; it’s key. It starts the employment cycle, and then retailers hire and the cycle returns to supply and demand. But if you don’t have a job, if you don’t know where your next dollar is coming from, then you don’t spend,” Olivieri said.

Unfortunately, for Florida, that job growth may be a long time in coming.

Unemployment in Southwest Florida stands at 12.7 percent, slightly above the 11.5 percent statewide average, which is at the highest level since October 1975. Nationally, unemployment is just under 10 percent.

Even more dire are some economists’ predictions that Florida’s unemployment rate will not fall to 6 percent — within the range of a moderately healthy economy — until 2018.

If that proves true, experts believe commercial real estate will remain depressed well into the future.

“The 12 percent unemployment rate in Sarasota and Manatee counties, and the 10 percent rate nationally, will create more commercial real estate vacancies,” Harshman said. “And more vacancies will, in turn, further drive down commercial real estate values.”

This story appeared in print on page D6