Articles About Credit Market

Commercial real estate investors are taking a wait-and-see attitude before jumping in and buying distressed assets, according to an Ernst & Young study.  “We haven’t seen many portfolio transactions so far,” says the study’s author, Chris Seyfarth, who is national director of E&Y’s non-performing loans.  “Given the size and the magnitude of the problem with […]

Downtown Chicago apartment buildings – especially Class A properties – are seeing a resurgence in occupancy and rental rates as residents apprehensive about the condominium market choose to rent rather than buy.  The average effective rent of downtown apartment buildings climbed to $2.17 PSF in the second quarter, a 2.4 percent increase over the first […]

While the commercial real estate market waits to bottom out, dozens of smaller buyers who pooled their dollars to buy office buildings during the boom may be in worse shape than large institutional investors.  These tenants-in-common (TIC) funds, which allow smaller investors to own multiple office buildings together, are facing the same issues as giant […]

The economic forecast for 2009 is bleak, although it’s possible that recovery will begin mid-year. This is the opinion of William Strauss and Rick Mattoon, senior economists with the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. “We are predicting that 2008 will yield real GDP of 0.2 percent and that 2009 will be 0.7 percent,” Strauss said. […]