housingstorm.com real estate news community

I don’t know how many buzzes and articles I’ve written over the last year about the state of commercial real estate; given how REITs stock prices have been behaving, to say that I’ve been feeling rather foolish is probably more than a mild understatement.  So it was ego soothing this morning to hear Bill Mack, the Chairman of Mack-Cali (CLI) give a rather gory description of the state of CRE.  I urge everyone to watch the interview from beginning to end as it touches on everything we have discussed in the ‘Ville, falling rents, rising cap rates, rising cost of debt, a massive need for recapitalization, etc.

Anecdotally, and coincidentally or not, virtually every time we have crossed CLI in our transactions during the halcyon days, we always saw them come in with offers meaningfully below many other players, offers that, as a buyer, made a whole lot of sense.  Thank goodness there were lots of other groups who checked their senses at the door before bidding.