Morgan Stanley to Give Up 5 San Francisco Towers Bought at Peak
Bloomberg NEWS　December 17, 2009 00:44 EST　By Dan Levy
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aLYZhnfoXOSk&pos=5

Dec. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Morgan Stanley, the securities firm that spent more than $8 billion on commercial property in 2007, plans to relinquish five San Francisco office buildings to its lender two years after purchasing them from Blackstone Group LP near the top of the market.

The bank has been negotiating an “orderly transfer” of the towers since earlier this year, Alyson Barnes, a Morgan Stanley spokeswoman, said yesterday in a telephone interview. AREA Property Partners will take over the buildings. Barnes declined to say when the transfer will occur.

“This isn’t a default or foreclosure situation,” Barnes said. “We are going to give them the properties to get out of the loan obligation.”

The San Francisco transfer would mark the second real estate deal to unravel this year for Morgan Stanley, which bet big on the property markets as prices were rising. The firm last month agreed to surrender 17 million square feet of office buildings to Barclays Capital after acquiring them for $6.5 billion in 2007 from Crescent Real Estate Equities. U.S. commercial real estate prices have dropped 43 percent from October 2007’s peak, Moody’s Investors Service said last month.

“It’s not surprising this deal ran into trouble,” Michael Knott, senior analyst at Green Street Advisors in Newport Beach, California, said in an interview. “It was eye-opening among a group of eye-opening deals. There was almost no price too high in 2007 for office space in top gateway markets.”

Lost Value

The Morgan Stanley buildings may have lost as much as 50 percent since the purchase, he estimated.

Morgan Stanley bought 10 San Francisco buildings in the city’s financial district as part of a $2.5 billion purchase from Blackstone Group in May 2007. The buildings were formerly owned by billionaire investor Sam Zell’s Equity Office Properties and acquired by Blackstone in its $39 billion buyout of the real estate firm earlier that year.

The buildings Morgan Stanley is giving up are One Post, 201 California St., Foundry Square I, 60 Spear St. and 188 Embarcadero, Barnes said. The bank will continue to own the five other office buildings it acquired in the deal, Barnes said.

Morgan Stanley, based in New York, was the biggest property investor among Wall Street firms at the time of the purchase. The transaction made the company one of the largest office landlords in San Francisco, with the purchase giving the bank 3.9 million square feet of office space there.

Defaults Rise

Commercial mortgage defaults more than doubled in the third quarter from a year earlier as occupancies fell, according to Real Estate Econometrics LLC. Office vacancies will reach a near-record 19 percent in the first quarter of 2011, broker CB Richard Ellis Group Inc. estimated.

Property sales financed with commercial mortgage-backed securities plunged 95 percent from a record $237 billion in 2007, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. A lack of securitized debt is driving down values, which may fall 55 percent from their peak, Moody’s said.

San Francisco prime office rents fell 37 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, the biggest decline since 2001, as companies cut jobs, Colliers International said. The vacancy rate rose to 14 percent, the highest since 2005. Almost 1.4 million square feet of space was returned to the market in the first nine months of the year.

Morgan Stanley last month agreed to hand over Crescent to Barclays, ending the firm’s obligation on a $2 billion loan after taking almost $1 billion in losses.

When Morgan Stanley acquired it, Crescent owned 54 office buildings in cities including Dallas, Houston, Denver, Miami and Las Vegas. It also owned the Canyon Ranch spa and resort, residential developments in Scottsdale, Arizona; Vail Valley, Colorado; and Lake Tahoe, California.

The San Francisco Business Times earlier reported Morgan Stanley’s plans to transfer the five buildings.

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詳しくは自動翻訳にでもかけて読んで下さいませ。

･･･で、簡単に申しますと、アメリカ経済ニュースBlogさん処に紹介が
ありますので、一部転載します。

《転載開始》
モルガンスタンレーがサンフランシスコにある商業物件の所有権を
放棄するそうだ。
どうやら、商業不動産市場がピークだった2007年に、
80億ドルで購入した10件のオフィスビルのうち、5件の所有権を債権者に
放棄するそうだ。

モルガンスタンレーの広報担当は、
「ローン破綻・差し押さえというわけではないが、ローン返済義務から
逃れるための所有権を放棄する」といっています。

オーナーは、物件価格が半値になったので、持っていても意味がない。
別に「借金取り」から、夜逃げする必要はないです。

「やーめた．物件を返すから、借金はチャラね！」

損するのは、銀行。

すでに商業不動産市場は、ピークから半値。
商業不動産は、こんな物件が全米にあるのです。

商業不動産ローンが貸出残高の50%以上を占める金融機関は
800行以上あるとのこと。

アメリカでの商業不動産ローンの総額は、3.4兆ドル。

商業不動産ローンの問題は、まだまだこれからおきそうです。
《転載終了》

･･･って事なのですが、株式相場風に言えば損切りと考えて戴ければ
判りやすいと思うのですが、要はここで一旦、放棄して商業不動産の
暴落を誘えば、のちのち底値で浚（さら）って底値確認をスピーチすれば
また騰がるワケで･････暴落を誘うカラ売り･･･みたいなモノと考えて戴ければ
判りやすいかと･････

･･･で、ビジネスが終わりを告げるのなら商業不動産は必要無いのですが、
ドコまで行ってもビジネスは尽きないワケでして･････
景気が反転･････もしくは仕掛けで不動産ファンドが活気付けば
はたまた反転爆騰げになるワケです。

現在半値という事は、下げ率はオーバーシュートを考えても
先は見えているワケでして･････最後の売り煽り攻勢を
1月～3月にかけて行なおうというシグナルでしょう･･･と、ワタシは思います。