CREFC

Subscribe to CREFC via RSS

The 2017 CREFC January Conference, which took place last week at the Loews Miami Beach Hotel, provided an opportunity for those in the commercial real estate finance industry to reflect on an eventful 2016, and look ahead to 2017.  Although attendance was down by almost 11% this year (we’ll blame Zika), around 1,600 people attended this year’s conference.  The mood of the conference was generally upbeat, with most attendees expressing cautious optimism for 2017.  As usual, the parties were lively, and 435 people attended Dechert’s reception at the SLS Hotel on Monday night to indulge in sushi surfboards and the national championship game.

While the panels, meetings and forums provided an opportunity to take the pulse of the industry, and we will get to 2017 and beyond shortly, we need to pause for a moment and look back at a year which may be an inflection point in our industry, our country, and possibly the world.

Continue Reading 2017 CREFC January Conference – Primed for a Comeback

And now to return to our commentary a few weeks back about the stultifying impact of ill-thought through rules and regulations (at best) (Brexit has intervened).  This is our Regulatory State which broadly attempted to pick winners and losers and modify market behavior, to get an engineered outcome by using the blunderbuss of proscriptive rules and regulation.
Continue Reading A Trip Through the Labyrinth – The Regulatory Man in Full

The slow start to 2016 did not dampen the enthusiasm at CREFC’s Annual Conference, held last week in New York City.  The conference saw record attendance, with standing-room-only crowds at virtually every panel.  As with the Industry Leaders Conference in January, the hot topics on people’s minds were risk retention (and the rest of the regulatory headwinds), liquidity and the competitiveness of the CMBS market.

The conference made very clear that we are at an inflection point in the current cycle.  The general mood of the conference, in our view, was the confluence of nervousness and cautious optimism.  The gloominess of the first quarter, and fears over the “sky is falling,” has yielded to mild bouts of enthusiasm (at least if the parties were any indication).  The capital markets have settled down over the past few months, spreads have tightened, and borrowers have begun to trickle back into the CMBS market.

Clearly our industry faces headwinds, and nobody is betting on a record second half, but we also did not hear anyone ringing the death knell for our business.  We left the conference with more questions than answers.  Here are some:Continue Reading CREFC Annual Conference 2016: Headwinds or Head First Into the Wall?

Last week, the House Committee on Financial Services reported out the Preserving Access to CRE Capital Act of 2016 (the “bill”) in a remarkably bipartisan sort of way (paving the way for: “Well, yes, I did vote for it, but then I voted against it.”).  The bill, which was drafted and backed by CREFC, would exempt certain single asset/single borrower securitizations from the risk retention requirements, would allow the B-piece buyer to acquire the risk retention piece in a senior/subordinate capital structure and loosen the criteria for a qualified commercial real estate loan to make it more useful for CMBS players endeavoring to meet the risk retention requirements of Dodd-Frank.  See Dechert’s OnPoint for a more detailed description of the bill.
Continue Reading Flash: Congress Fixes the CMBS Risk Retention Problem (Just Kidding)

The 2016 CRE Finance Council Industry Leaders Conference, held this week in Miami, was dominated by two topics– risk retention and liquidity. Almost all the forums, panels and presentations at the conference were overshadowed by the specter of risk retention and more general concerns about liquidity.  
Continue Reading CREFC Industry Leaders Conference 2016

93850823-1More than 100 senior executives participated in Dechert’s Risk and Rewards of CRE-CLO and CLO Securitizations: Navigating the Capital Markets seminar.  The half day event, supported by  CRE Finance Council (CREFC) and the Loan Syndications and Trading Association (LSTA), focused on themes important to the CLO market and the CRE securitization market.  Panelists addressed…

capital

This is a good news story for once.  But, of course, since the father of this soupcon of good news is our government, it’s almost unintended.

From the ashes of the economic recession of 2008 came the rebirth of the Immigration Investor Program, more commonly known as “EB-5 Visa Program.”  This bit of social engineering has been around since the program was first introduced back in 1990 but got a second wind when everything else went to Hell.  The purpose behind the program was to benefit the United States economy by attracting investments from qualified foreign nationals.
Continue Reading The EB-5 Visa Program: the Rebirth of the Immigration Investor Program

rooftopFor all of us in the commercial real estate industry, June has become synonymous with summer CREFC, a mid-year industry check-in and opportunity to mingle with industry participants.  Like past conferences, this year’s conference, which was held earlier this week, was once again filled with informative industry updates and lively panel discussions.

On Monday, much of the morning and early afternoon was devoted to various industry forums.  The day culminated with a panel titled “What Industry Titans Think of the Markets,” moderated by Citigroup’s Thomas M. Flexner, and panelist Richard LeFrak of the LeFrak Organization, Stephen M. Ross of Related Companies, and Robert S. Taubman of Taubman Centers, Inc.  Monday evening was filled with receptions hosted by a number of industry players, including Dechert’s own reception at the Refinery Hotel Rooftop.
Continue Reading CREFC New York City (June 2015) Conference Recap

New York will again play host to CREFC’s annual conference, and over 800 of our colleagues are scheduled to attend. The conference begins next Monday with a slate of forums discussing current issues relating to high yield distressed real estate assets, portfolio lending, GSE multifamily lending, investment grade bonds, B-pieces, issuers and servicers.
Continue Reading CREFC Annual Conference 2014 Preview