Last week’s earnings reports from a few different REITs indicated that commercial office space and commercial lending have not fallen into the crisis the financial media has warned of. The fear in the markets is that low office space occupancy will lead to declining property values and commercial mortgage defaults.
Also, since commercial mortgages are almost exclusively adjustable, rising interest rates hurt commercial property owners with sometimes significant increases in the cost of servicing their debt.
There have been anecdotal stories of downtown office buildings remaining mostly empty post-pandemic. There also has been a couple of defaults on commercial loans. The question now is whether these will be isolated problems or indicate a larger issue with commercial property (especially office buildings) and commercial mortgage lenders.
Boston Properties (BXP) owns office buildings in Boston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. Those cities are often cited when discussing occupancy and value problems. For the first quarter, BXP reported FFO of $1.73 per share, beating the Wall Street estimate by five cents. The company increased its full-year FFO guidance by four cents, to $7.17 per share. The company reported positive net operating income growth and signed 522,000 square feet of office leases during the quarter with healthy GAAP and cash rent spreads. This office REIT posted very good first quarter results. BXP currently yields 7.8%.
Highwoods Properties (HIW) owns business district office buildings in Sunbelt cities, including Raleigh and Charlotte in North Carolina; Nashville, Tennessee; Atlanta, Georgia; Tampa, Florida; and Dallas, Texas. Highwoods reported FFO of $0.98 per share for the first quarter, beating the Wall Street estimate by five cents. At the end of the quarter, occupancy was 89.6%.
During its earnings call, the Highwoods management team acknowledged…
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