by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
When CRE hits investors, fine, they were paid to take those risks. But we’re a little more squeamish when it comes to banks.
Commercial Real Estate loans amount to about $5 trillion. Not all CRE sectors are in trouble. At one end of the spectrum: Industrial is still in good shape. At the other end of the spectrum: office is in terrible shape. Somewhere in the middle: There have been some big defaults in multifamily, but the sector is in much better shape than office.
The 4,026 or so FDIC-insured commercial banks held $2.4 trillion of CRE loans at the end of 2023, according to FDIC data, amounting to roughly 10% of their total assets of $23.7 trillion. So banks hold a little less than half of CRE loans, and those loans are about 10% of their total assets.