L.A.'s troubled properties

You're looking at $11 billion worth of trouble, according to Real Capital Analytics, which has compiled data on income-producing properties around the country. That's not quite as bad as NY ($12 billion), but worse than Vegas ($6 billion) and South Florida ($4.2 billion). The most vulnerable properties are hotels, offices, apartment complexes and warehouses. From the NYT:

“The trouble that’s emerged is bigger than most of us expected,” Robert M. White Jr., the president of Real Capital Analytics, said in an interview in his Manhattan office, “and the size of the problem that is potentially out there is much greater than we thought we would be able to quantify at this point.” Many of these difficulties have surfaced just since mid-September, when the financial world suffered a series of jolts, including the collapse of Lehman Brothers, he said.

Until now, most of the reporting on loan defaults has come from companies that monitor commercial mortgage-backed securities. But securitized loans make up only 31 percent of Mr. White’s database, which also includes condominium construction loans, bank loans that were not securitized and debt issued by insurance companies and so-called mezzanine lenders, which hold junior debt positions. More than 1,000 properties are clearly in trouble, he said.

[CUT]

Pessimism in the industry appears to be pervasive, with some specialists predicting not only that building sponsors will lose their equity but that mezzanine lenders will also be wiped out. “In many high-profile New York buildings, gale-force market winds are blowing destructively straight through the equity, slicing through the mezz and zeroing in on the first mortgages,” said Douglas Harmon, a senior managing director at Eastdil Secured and one of the city’s leading brokers.