Congress weighs in on commercial real estate

A 79-member group from the House of Representatives is urging the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve to ramp up their efforts to stave off a commercial real estate crisis that could bring down the economic recovery. In a letter sent yesterday, the bipartisan group, led by Paul Kanjorski, a Pennsylvania Democrat, and Ken Calvert, a California Republican, urged the agencies to publicly encourage lenders to make credit available for property owners who want to refinance mortgages on performing assets whose values have declined. “In order to safeguard the businesses operating on Main Street and protect the millions of jobs depending on commercial real estate, the Treasury and the Federal Reserve now must take needed and urgent action to stave off a potentially devastating wave of commercial real estate foreclosures and bank losses,” Kanjorski said in a statement. [NYT]