商业地产，下一颗要暴的雷？ | 经济学人财经

英文部分选自经济学人20230401财经版块

Finance & economics | The next shoe to drop

财经 | 下一个倒掉的会是谁？

Commercial-property losses will add to banks’ woes

商业地产贬值，令银行业雪上加霜

Real-estate investors see a hellish-perfect-dumpster-fire-storm

房地产市场风雨飘摇，投资者苦不堪言

Ask an investor to describe the outlook for commercial property and you will get a colourful response. “Office is a dumpster fire,” says Daniel McNamara of Polpo, an investment fund. His view of the wider market, which includes shops and warehouses, is only a little less grim: “It really is the perfect storm.” Tom Capasse of Waterfall Asset Management, an investment firm, has nicknamed places where the tech bubble has burst, including San Francisco and Seattle, “office hell.”

到大街上随便抓一个投资者，问问他怎么看待商业地产的前景，你得到的答案可能会是：五彩斑斓的黑。投资基金Polpo的丹尼尔·麦克纳马拉（Daniel McNamara）表示：“办公楼已经完全没救了”。即便是谈到更宏观的市场，把商店和仓库等类别也考虑进来，麦克纳马拉所描绘的也是一片愁云惨淡：“整个市场都是风雨飘摇”。投资公司Waterfall资产管理（Waterfall Asset Management）的汤姆·卡帕西（Tom Capasse）则戏称遭遇科技泡沫破灭打击的城市（如旧金山和西雅图）是“办公室地狱”。

A combination of nasty events has produced this hellish-perfect-dumpster-fire-storm. The lingering impact of covid-19, which kept shoppers away from malls and workers at home, has undermined the value of shopping centres and offices; all real-estate valuations are undermined by higher interest rates, which push up landlords’ expenses. These woes have been added to by the recent banking turmoil and fears of a recession in which workers are laid off and their former employers downsize.

地产业所遭遇的五彩斑斓的地狱黑风暴是一系列黑天鹅事件共同作用的结果。新冠疫情的负面影响犹在，许多人仍是居家工作，商场也始终没能恢复往日的喧嚣，这拉低了购物中心和办公楼的价值。高企的利率全面打击了房地产的估值，推高了房东成本。最近的银行业暴雷以及对经济衰退导致工人失业、企业精简的担忧更是雪上加霜。

The situation poses a problem for two big, intertwined American industries. The first is property, where owners are grappling with the idea that the office buildings they own—uncomfortably empty and unlikely to fill up again—might be worth only half what they paid for them. The second is their financiers. When Brookfield, an asset manager, recently decided it would be better off handing over the keys of two vast office towers in Los Angeles, rather than refinancing the $784m of loans it owed on them, it handed the keys over to Citigroup and Morgan Stanley, two big banks.

这一情况给美国两个体量庞大又密不可分的行业带来了问题。首先是房地产业，办公楼大面积空置，也没什么重新填满的希望；夜不能寐的业主们担忧名下房产的价值可能跌至买入价一半。睡不着觉的还有贷款给他们的人。近日，资产管理公司布鲁克菲尔德（Brookfield）决定，与其再次筹措7.84亿美元的资金偿还公司在洛杉矶的两栋办公楼的贷款，不如直接违约，让花旗银行和摩根士丹利将大楼没收。

注释：

grapple：If yougrapple with a problem or difficulty, you try hard to solve it. 努力解决 (问题)

No commercial-property sector looks insulated. “Even in warehousing you have seen firms like Amazon admit they overspent and overbuilt,” says Mr McNamara. But the real concern is office space, which makes up around a quarter of total commercial property (and its debts) in America, because “it is not a cyclical issue”.

没有任何商业地产板块能够独善其身。麦克纳马拉先生说，“即使在仓储领域，亚马逊这样的公司也承认存在费用超支和过度建设的问题”。但真正令人担忧的是占美国商业地产（及其债务）约四分之一的办公楼，因为“这不是个周期性问题”。

Vacancy rates have risen in all but the best offices. Landlords are offering generous incentives to lure skittish tenants. In San Francisco more than 29% of offices are empty, nearly eight times the pre-pandemic level. Asking rents in the city, which has seen the biggest jump in vacancies across America, are down by 15% compared with 2019. As these buildings can have high costs to run, in part owing to property taxes, even a small dip in rents or occupancy can turn a building into a lossmaker.

空置率全面上升，幸免于难的只有顶级办公楼。房东们加大优惠力度，来吸引患得患失的租客。在旧金山，超过29%的办公室都在空置，几乎是疫情前水平的八倍。作为全美空置率增幅最大的城市，这里的租金要价比2019年下降了15%。由于房产税等等原因，这些办公楼的运营成本居高不下，一旦房租小幅下降，或空置率稍有抬头，便会成为赔本生意。

注释：

skittish: If you describe a person or animal asskittish, you mean they are easily made frightened or excited. 易受惊的; 易激动的

Some landlords may be unable, or unwilling, to hang on to these properties. They may be unable if they cannot roll over their loans. Around 15% of outstanding commercial-property debts across all lender types in America are maturing this year, reports Kevin Fagan of Moody’s Analytics, a research firm. Of these, he thinks about 40% might have trouble refinancing. Landlords may be unwilling if the buildings involved are clearly worth less than the value of the loan. There are examples of “bigger sponsors pre-emptively giving back the keys even a year before loans were due to expire,” notes Mr Capasse.

一些房东可能无力或无心继续持有这些办公楼。无力，是因为若不展期，他们将无钱还贷。研究公司穆迪（Moody’s Analytics）的凯文·费根（Kevin Fagan）在其报告中称，美国所有贷款机构中，约有15%的未偿商业地产债务将于今年到期。费根认为，其中约40%可能无法实现再融资。无心，是因为若名下办公楼的价值明显低于贷款额，继续持有将得不偿失。卡帕西指出，这也不是什么新鲜事了：曾有业主在贷款还有一年才到期时就迫不及待断供，将累赘甩给银行。

At the end of 2022, the commercial-property industry owed $5.6trn in debt to investors and financial institutions. According to Trepp, a data provider, half of this was to banks. Brookfield and funds of its size might need to repay big institutions, but the vast majority are on the hook to lenders with below $250bn in assets—ones which are already under severe stress after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

截至2022年底，商业地产行业的债务规模达到56万亿美元，债主既有投资者，也有金融机构。根据数据提供商Trepp的数据，其中一半是银行贷款。放贷给布鲁克菲尔德（Brookfield）这种体量的基金的可能多是大型金融机构，但绝大多数的债主都是资产低于2500亿美元的中小型金融机构，而他们在硅谷银行倒闭后就已经承受着巨大压力。

The danger is that banks end up with lots of offices, which they have to sell at deep discounts. This will bring back memories of the global financial crisis of 2007-09. But there are reasons to think history will not repeat. First, commercial property is worth just half as much as residential real estate, which is where problems were last time around. Second, lax lending saw banks grant mortgages worth as much as 100% of a home’s value before the financial crisis. Commercial-property lenders, by contrast, offer a borrower a maximum 75% mortgage, meaning prices will have to fall much further for banks to face losses.

危险也随之而来，银行名下“室”满为患，不得不大幅打折将其出售。这不由得让人们想起2007 -2009年的金融危机。当然，我们仍有理由相信历史不会重演。首先，商业地产价值不过是住宅地产的一半，而后者才是导致金融危机的元凶。其次，金融危机前，银行采取了宽松的贷款政策，业主可以申请等同于房产总价值的全额贷款。而目前，为商业地产放贷的机构则将上限控制在房屋总价的75%，这意味着除非地产价格继续大幅下跌，银行还不至于面临损失。

注释：

lax: If you say that a person's behaviour or a system is lax, you mean they are not careful or strict about maintaining high standards. 松懈的; 不严格的

Even the worst-case scenario would have limited impact. Roughly a quarter of the $2.2trn of commercial-property loans owed to small banks are office loans. Imagine that landlords hand back the keys on half these loans this year—some $280bn in total. If banks could recover just half the value of the loans by selling off the assets at deep discounts (say, a third of their value three years ago) they would be wearing losses of $140bn. That is just 10% of the equity capital that small banks hold. The blow would be unevenly distributed, however, and could imperil some institutions.

即便在最糟糕的情况下，负面影响也很有限。小型银行总计2.2万亿的商业地产贷款中，仅四分之一是办公楼的贷款。假如今年有一半的业主断供，将房产拱手让出，银行将有总计2800亿美元的贷款无法收回。如果以较大折扣（比如说这些资产三年前价值的三分之一）卖掉这些资产，银行的损失大约为1400亿。而这不过是这些小型银行产权资本的10%。当然，这样的冲击并非均匀分布，总会有一些银行损失惨重。

注释：

equity capital : the part of the share capital of a company owned by ordinary shareholders or in certain circumstances by other classes of shareholder股本权益.

在这篇文章的语境下，可理解为产权资本。

The office apocalypse

办公楼启示录

There remains the question of what happens to buildings no one wants to work in anymore. Many offices already need sprucing up. And building costs are sky-high, thanks to material and labour shortages, as well as new laws around the world which seek to make buildings greener. Energy-efficiency rules in England and Wales, for example, will make it unlawful to let one in twelve buildings in London from April 1st, unless landlords upgrade them.

无人承租的办公楼如何处理，仍然是个问题。许多办公楼亟待整修，然而由于材料和劳动力短缺，加之世界各地推进绿色建筑的新法规，建筑成本变得极高。比如按照英格兰和威尔士的能效规定，如果房东不进行改造，自4月1日起伦敦十二分之一的建筑将面临被认定为违法出租的风险。

注释：

1.apocalypse：启示录，一种文学体裁，如今常被用作catastrophe的同义词，一般用于预言灾难、战争、毁灭、或是神的再度降临等。（参见Wikipedia-Apocalypse和百度百科-Apocalypse）

2.spruce up: to make (someone or something) look cleaner, neater, or more attractive. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary) 美化

3.energy-efficiency：英格兰和威尔士对建筑采用能源效率证书评定，从高到低A-G七个等级，自2023年4月起F及以下的商业租赁建筑如继续出租将被处5000-15000磅罚款。

资料来源：《英国不断提高绿色建筑能效标准 小型业主难以承担改建费用》

https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1728528630016683137&wfr=spider&for=pc

4.let (rent): ‘let’ mainly UK, US usually ‘rent’. (Cambridge Dictionary) 出租

Ryan Williams of Cadre, a property-investment platform, foresees two paths. The first is a “fundamental repricing, where the banks take back the keys and sell assets at a huge discount”. This might allow new buyers to adapt, upgrading or maintaining buildings so that they suit lower occupancies. In the second, local officials step in: “It is not in the interest of [many cities] to see a whole street of lower-tier office buildings become blighted, so governments may start to offer incentives to renovate or convert.” In some places, this kind of adaptation is already happening. Look out of the windows at The Economist’s office in Washington and on any given weekday a handful of builders are busy converting the old Vanguard building, an office that once housed the Peace Corps, into a block of shiny new apartments.

地产投资平台Cadre的瑞安·威廉姆斯（Ryan Williams）提出了两种解决方案。一是“根本性的重新定价，银行收回产权，将地产大幅降价出售”，这或许可以给新买家更大的回旋余地，将办公楼加以改造或维持现状，以适应高空置率的“新常态”。二是当地政府介入：“如果一整条街的低端办公楼破败荒废，也不符合（许多城市）的利益，因此政府可能会提供翻修或改造的激励措施。”许多城市已经这样做了：从《经济学人》华盛顿办公室的窗外看去，每个工作日都有几个工程队在忙活着Vanguard大楼的改造工作。这幢老楼曾是和平队（Peace Corps）的办公地点，它将被改造成闪亮的新公寓。