Commercial Real Estate Goes From South Beach to the South Lawn

Matt Welch | September 2, 2009

You knew that the commercial real estate collapse, like Karen Carpenter's love, has only just begun, right? If not, read this New York Times primer. You will especially enjoy how it begins:

As the commercial real estate market heated up earlier in the decade and lenders competed feverishly to issue ever-riskier mortgages, hundreds of bankers, investors, lawyers, brokers, appraisers, accountants and analysts flocked to an investors' conference in Florida each January to celebrate their good fortune with lavish beach parties featuring bikini-clad models and popular entertainers.

But in what a Prudential Real Estate Investors report described as "a move of near-perfect symbolism," the conference sponsor, the Commercial Mortgage Securities Association, recently announced that next year's event would be relocated from South Beach to Washington, where the industry has been lobbying strenuously for federal assistance.

Yet another sign that political connectivity is an indicator of slippage, not ascendancy.

Comments

Lester Hunt|9.2.09 @ 12:23PM|#

The commercial real estate meltdown is one more thing that Gerald Celente predicted months before it happened.

JB|9.2.09 @ 12:39PM|#

Suck that government cock, CRE shitheads.

John Galt|9.2.09 @ 1:44PM|#

As someone who has attended CMSA in South Beach for the past 3 years, I am so disappointed. DC in January? Really? The CMSA is definitely latched tightly to the government teet and has been for some time now.

Alan Vanneman|9.2.09 @ 6:06PM|#

Hey, if it brings more bikini-clad models to Washington, I'm down with it.