I have posted a few times on the problem surrounding an imminent writedown wave for commercial real estate (CRE) and construction loans in the US. A few days back, I had intended to post more about regionals. The Wall Street Journal had a good article about this problem, singling out Wachovia and Bank of America as the major banks most exposed to construction loans. The article begins
“While Wachovia Corp.’s residential-mortgage woes have gotten most of the blame for the ouster of Chief Executive G. Kennedy Thompson, another real-estate specter looms.
Wachovia has been the country’s second-largest maker of construction loans after Bank of America Corp., with $23.9 billion of debt outstanding to developers of single-family homes, condominiums, office buildings, stores and other commercial projects at the end of the first quarter, according to Foresight Analytics, a research company based in Oakland, Calif.”
–Wall Street Journal, 03 Jun 2008
Watch developments in CRE and construction loans because they will mean significant exposure to write-offs by smaller local banks.
Sources
After Mortgages, Construction Crisis May Be Building, Wall Street Journal, 3 June 2008
Community Banks Move into Mortgages; So, Too, Does Credit Crunch, HousingWire, 5 Jun 2008
See also:
National City is on probation
The Credit Crisis Timeline for a full list of writedowns by institution.