Economic Stability Plan Good News for CRE

On Tuesday, February 10th, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner outlined a comprehensive plan intended to stabilize our financial system. In the address, Secretary Geithner outlined the new administration’s goals for strengthening our economy: to get credit flowing again to families and businesses, and impose new measures and conditions to strengthen accountability, oversight and transparency in how taxpayer dollars are spent.

This so-called “Stability Plan” is a step in the right direction towards restoring our economy, and has some elements that will favorably impact the commercial real estate industry. For example, by leveraging private capital and allowing private sector buyers to determine the price for current troubled assets, we can hopefully be on a path to solving our toxic mortgage epidemic. Additionally, expanding the reach of the Consumer & Business Lending Initiative to include Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities (CMBS) will help unlock the frozen credit markets so that we can see a return in lending once again. Lastly, the more rigid standards set forward for banks and other financial institutions to show accountability, transparency, and solvency will go a long way to restoring the public’s confidence and trust in our banking institutions.

This new charted course of action does seem promising. But as with anything, the devil is in the details and much still remains to be seen on how this will be implemented, and the impact it will have on our stressed financial system.