Commercial Property News - October 2008 - (Page 31)

INDUSTRY PULSE BROKERAGE CCIM categorization follows the names of about 20 percent of member brokers, estimated H. Ross Ford, the network’s president. TCN also incorporates classes into its national meetings to encourage members to work toward certification. FINANCE Continued from page 23 Still, the decision to pursue a formal designation program or to weight designations heavily in the hiring process has by no means proved obvious. A credential offers both prestige and practical value, but it is neither a requirement for a successful career nor the sole path to educational enrichment. Extension courses and in-house training, whether in the classroom or online, are only two other options that provide valuable training. In the end, the commitment to pursue a program depends on the individual broker. As Binswanger Corp. president David Binswanger pointed out, “Going to Harvard Business School isn’t for everybody.” —Reach senior associate editor Paul Rosta at paul.rosta@nielsen.com. AT ANY COST the bottom line is there will be lots of assets hitting the market priced to sell,”Williamson said. So far,pricing of these assets is all over the board but logically reflects the strengths and weaknesses of the underlying collateral,borrowers and geographic location, according to First Financial president & CEO Bliss Morris.“For example, a commercial loan in Florida is trading much lower than, say, a commercial loan with the same basic characteristics in Texas,” Morris elaborated. “For areas of the country where real estate values are deeply depressed, loan prices are similarly low.” Michael Van Konynenburg, president of real estate investment banker and distressed-debt-advisory pioneer Eastdil Secured L.L.C., stressed that non-performing income-property mortgages should not be anywhere near the level of crisis this time around that they were back in the disastrous early 1990s. Despite some excesses in commercial lending in recent years, Eastdil Secured’s distressed-debt sales to date have been weighted heavily toward land and residential debt, as income-property defaults have not yet become a huge issue for commercial bank clients, he related. “This cycle was driven by housing and at the consumer level, but I don’t see as much an impact at the income-property level,” he said. Nevertheless, one source that requested anonymity suggested that more banks will get serious about shedding non-performing incomeproperty loans in the wake of the third-quarter financial reporting period.“It won’t be pretty” with respect to loan losses, the source predicted. “It’s going to force the issue.” u Visit www.cpnonline.com/search and enter key words “Modern Strategy” in quotation marks for insight into technology benefiting the loan-sale process. www.cpnonline.com • October 2008 • COMMERCIAL PROPERTY NEWS 31 http://scps.nyu.edu/x633 http://scps.nyu.edu/x633 http://www.cpnonline.com/search http://www.cpnonline.com

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CPN - October 2008 Contents Starting Line Industrial Data/Analysis Conferences Chicago Market Profile Finance International Title Insurance Brokerage Corporate Report

Commercial Property News - October 2008

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