The lurking crisis of sovereign debt including that of the US remains a huge potential problem for the capital markets and the US economy as well as real estate values. Value is always a function of potential return and net present value of the future cash flows including, and most important, the terminal value at sale or refinance. For the past two years, and going forward for at least most of this year, the interest rates prevailing in the US and other major economies is artificially low. At the same time many of the major economies, and many smaller ones, continue to build up increasing deficits. The US deficit if ramping up at an alarming rate and there is absolutely no leadership from the White House to deal with this. It is now so serious that a bipartisan group of 64 senators had to write a public letter to the president to get involved. Instead he lets Harry Reid fight any budget reductions and stonewall any progress on this issue.

What does all this mean for the capital markets and real estate values? The world cannot continue to have increasing deficits, more fiscal and monetary stimulus, and inflation of oil and food prices, and not have increases in interest rates. Rates will rise by next year. Just look at the yield curve. In time many countries, including the US will be forced to raise rates to deal with inflation and to attract capital to fund these deficits. The magnitude of the federal capital needs, plus the magnitude of state and local government needs, the $3 trillion unfunded liabilities of the state and municipal pensions, will drive up rates and will also cause some level of crowding out of private capital. Taxes at all levels of government have to rise. Fees of all sorts will have to rise. Combine this with the clear intent of Elizabeth Warren and Obama to clamp down on banks and to materially squeeze profits out of all types of consumer lending and you will force the banks to raise rates on commercial lending to make up for these profit reductions. Lastly, lending underwriting for real estate will continue to be restrictive for quite awhile for the secondary type assets in secondary locations. That means to get financing to pay off maturing loans, borrowers will pay higher rates.

Over the next eighteen months rates will rise, and will continue to rise thereafter. Given the growing and unsustainable deficits at the sovereign level in the US and other nations, at some point in the next couple of years we will hit a tipping point if Obama and Harry Reid do not start to agree on fixing the problem. Prime Minister Cameron has shown real political leadership by tackling the issue head on and taking great pressure to do what is required long term. Governor walker and other governors like Christie are doing the same in the face of massive efforts by unions to stop them and to continue the old way of over paying teachers and other government worker, and way over promising on pensions.

The net result of this is that when projecting terminal values out three or five years, it becomes very hard and uncertain. Where will rates be. I have no idea other than much higher. That translates into a situation where more equity is required to get a loan than was the case in 05-07 due to tighter underwriting than in 06-07, and rates will be much higher than today, so the cash on cash returns to the equity be lower. Cap rates will therefore rise accordingly. A lot more assets will be on the market, so the shortage of product and the excess capital available today which has driven down cap rates will likely reverse and further drive cap rates up to attract investors. There is a very real potential for continuing fiscal crisis for nations, and especially the US unless real action is taken quickly and not silly reductions of $4 billion which is barely one day of interest on the national debt.

Bottom line is, be very aware of all of this when analyzing real estate investments and projecting terminal cap rates and returns. I do not have a specific projection of cap rates, interest rates or values in three and five years. So you need to make your own evaluation and risk adjustments to your analysis. As we see this past month, the black swans are swarming all over the sky and landing on the lake at a rapid rate. The geopolitical risks are huge, leadership in the White House is totally lacking as we see on Libya, and the risks are very high.

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Joel Ross

Joel Ross began his career in Wall St as an investment banker in 1965, handling corporate advisory matters for a variety of clients. During the seventies he was CEO of North American operations for a UK based conglomerate, and sat on the parent company board. In 1981, he began his own firm handling leveraged buyouts, investment banking and real estate financing. In 1984 Ross began providing investment banking services and arranging financing for real estate transactions with his own firm, Ross Properties, Inc. In 1993 Ross and a partner, Lexington Mortgage, created the first Wall St hotel CMBS program in conjunction with Nomura. They went on to develop a similar CMBS program for another major Wall St investment bank and for five leading hotel companies. Lexington, in partnership with Mr. Ross established a hotel mortgage bank table funded by an investment bank, and making all CMBS hotel loans on their behalf. In 1999 he formed Citadel Realty Advisors as a successor to Ross Properties Corp., focusing on real estate investment banking in the US, UK and Paris. He has closed over $3.0 billion of financings for office, hotel, retail, land and multifamily projects. Ross is also a founder of Market Street Investors, a brownfield land development company, and has been involved in the acquisition of notes on defaulted loans and various REO assets in conjunction with several major investors. Ross was an adjunct professor in the graduate program at the NYU Hotel School. He is a member of Urban Land Institute and was a member of the leadership of his ULI council. In 1999, he conceived and co-authored with PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Hotel Mortgage Performance Report, a major study of hotel mortgage default rates.