Monday’s Numbers: April 1, 2013

A Quiet Week

Maybe it was the upcoming holiday weekend. Maybe it was worries about Cyprus’s failing financial health. Maybe it was watching the S&P 500 index reach record levels. Whatever it was, this was the quietest period we’ve seen in a very long time.

It’s not that nothing happened during the week; while there were no blockbuster acquisition—disposition—financing deals announced, plenty of mortal-sized deals happened. REITs continued to prune weaker assets and focus on their core portfolios; institutional investors continued to commitment money to both domestic as well as international investment funds as real estate remains an attractive alternative on a relative value basis, notwithstanding the record-setting performance of the stock market. Sellers came to terms with buyers.

Commercial banks, insurance companies, and securitized lenders continued to issue commitments at below 5 percent yields as spreads remain basically unchanged and are likely to go nowhere unless the capital markets “get the willies.” 10-year paper seems to have settled in the extremely attractive 175 (multifamily) to 200 (malls) basis points over 10-year U.S. Treasury range.

Most of our sources did not update their surveys this week; anecdotally, lenders we spoke with reported little to no change in spreads and terms.

Monday’s Numbers

Due to the capital markets being closed on March 29 for the Good Friday holiday, the Trepp survey was not published this week.

The Cushman & Wakefield Equity, Debt, and Structured Finance Group’s monthly survey of commercial real estate mortgage spreads for the period ending March 5, 2013 showed spreads for 10-year, fixed rate mortgages, basically unchanged as compared to the prior survey period ending February 4^th.

Liquidity, whether sourced privately from commercial banks and insurance companies, or publicly via the CMBS market, remains abundant and priced aggressively as lenders compete for business.

Year-to-Date Public Equity Capital Markets

DJIA ⁽¹⁾: +11.25%
S&P 500 ^(2): +10.03%
NASDAQ ⁽³⁾: +8.21%
Russell 2000 ^(4): +12.03%
Morgan Stanley U.S. REIT ⁽⁵⁾: +7.12%

^{(1) Dow Jones Industrial Average. (2) Standard & Poor’s 500 Stock Index. (3) NASD Composite Index. (4) Small Capitalization segment of U.S. equity universe. (5) Morgan Stanley REIT Index.}