by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
Whoever buys the defaulted loan gets the tower. So far, investors and specialized lenders have been on the hook, not commercial banks.
The market for office towers is starting to thaw just a tiny bit, and some sales have now occurred or are on the horizon, with massive markdowns that serve as benchmarks for future deals. Until these sales occur, no one really knows what older office towers are worth in the new era of working from home and vacant office towers.
In Manhattan, sales of office buildings have collapsed from $5 billion in Q1 2022 to just $489 million in Q1 2023, the lowest sales since 2009, according to MSCI, cited by the Wall Street Journal.