O.C. property investor seeks bankruptcy rescue
Orange County Register
By Jeff Collins
... The vision was simple. Borrow money, build first-class office buildings for small business owners, lease out the space, then refinance the loans when they come due a few years later.
Then, economic Armageddon hit. Money for new loans dried up. Unemployment soared. Banks and finance firms failed. The stock market crashed...
... Lower property values and stricter lending guidelines means that about 65 percent of the riskiest loan types - totaling $100 billion -- won't qualify for new loans when they become due in the next few years.
Stan Ross, board chairman of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate, said that in addition to bank financing, $200 million of commercial mortgage backed bonds are coming due by the end of 2009 and about $275 million going into 2010.
"Since there's no liquidity in the market, there is no known direct source of replacing those commercial mortgage backed bonds," Ross said. "So far we haven't seen a big dumping of commercial portfolios on the marketplace for discounts. But standby."...