From left: Sam Chandan, head of Real Estate Econometrics, and Dan Fasulo, managing director of Real Capital Analytics

New York City-based research firm Real Estate Econometrics has joined another New York City-based research company Real Capital Analytics, said Dan Fasulo, RCA head of research and managing director, in a release sent today by RCA. Sam Chandan, head of the approximately two-year-old national Real Estate Econometrics, will become global chief economist with RCA and will serve as executive vice president. Chandan said that the firm is joining RCA in part because of its global scope. “We are looking forward to being part of the RCA family,” Chandan said. “As the flow of real estate capital and credit becomes increasingly international, RCA’s global platform offers the foremost vantage point for thought leadership and industry impact.” TRD

Pending home sales rose to 3.7 percent during the month of October, up 32 percent year-over-year, according to Real Estate Econometrics. That’s the highest annual increase ever recorded by the research firm, bringing its index to its highest level since March 2006. Lief Thomsen, founder and CEO of Mortgage Master, said that while the residential market appears to be steadily improving, the big question in the industry is what will happen in April when the homebuyer tax credit expires. Meanwhile, commercial mortgage defaults set records of their own. In that metric’s largest quarterly increase ever, commercial defaults doubled to 3.4 percent in the third quarter, CNBC’s Diana Olick reported.

A recent report from research firm Real Estate Econometrics shows that commercial mortgage defaults have a long way to go before bottoming out. The number of mortgage defaults could peak in the next two years, the report says, and that high level of commercial distress could sustain through 2013. “That’s a situation that will grow more serious over the course of the next year or more,” Econometrics President Sam Chandan said. His group forecasts as many as 5.2 percent of commercial and 5.5 percent of multi-family mortgages will default in fourth-quarter 2010.

CBRE’s Enoch Lawrence (left) and Sam Chandan of Real Estate Econometrics

In a sign of how troubled the market for bonds backed by commercial
real estate may be, and by extension, the future of some office
building owners, a key deadline for federal bailout money designed to
get money flowing again to landlords has come and gone without any
takers. Up until June 16, investors in those bonds, like insurance companies,
hedge funds and credit unions, had been invited to dip into the Term
Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF, to borrow some of the
$200 billion fund set by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The chief reason there’s been zero interest in TALF so far, according to industry analysts, economists and brokers, is that there hasn’t been enough time to put complicated deals together. Indeed, it was only in May that the Fed announced that commercial mortgages would be eligible for TALF money, and a month wasn’t long enough for lenders to market their assets to willing buyers, they say. [more]

Commercial loan defaults are increasing even as residential
foreclosures begin to slow. A recent report from Real Estate
Econometrics found that the default rate on commercial mortgages rose
to 2.25 percent in the first quarter of 2009, up from 1.62 percent in
the fourth quarter of 2008, the biggest quarterly jump since 2003. Sam
Chandan, president of Real Estate Econometrics, said he expects the
default rate to hit 4.1 percent by the end of this year and rise to a
peak of 5.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011. That could mean
foreclosure for nearly $200 billion of the close to $3.5 trillion in
commercial properties around the country. [more]

Baskin Robbins is known for having 31 flavors of ice cream. This month,
the “Flavor of the Month” is “Coconut Grove” while last
month the flavor was “Purely Parfait.” In the world of commercial real estate, the preferred investment class
or “flavor” of the year — not month — is the opportunity to pursue a
real estate mortgage note that is in default. Investment brokers were selling office buildings, multi-family
apartment houses and land for residential development at record highs
in 2006 and 2007. Today, with limited amount of debt available for
financing any real estate transaction, investment sales are down. [more]

Clockwise from left: Joseph Moinian, Sam Chandan, David Von Spreckelsen, Robert Levine, Jeffrey Levine and David Lowenfeld spoke at the New York Real Estate Summit yesterday.

Deep price drops and buyers bent on negotiation are trends in all of New York City’s boroughs, but residential developers say they are seeing distinct variations by neighborhood in the magnitude of price drops and the number of deals that make it to closing. “We have found a difference in neighborhoods in terms of closings,” said Robert Levine, president and CEO of RAL Companies & Affiliates, at a residential market panel at yesterday’s New York Real Estate Summit, hosted by The Real Deal columnist Michael Stoler. The Real Deal was a sponsor of the event. [more]