US commercial property to tumble

       Commercial-property prices in the US will fall in the next 18 months as distressed mortgages are sole and banks rework problem loans, says New York real-estate-investment adviser Howard Michaels.
       More than US$1.3 billion (Bt43.62 billion) of real-estate debt on offices, malls and apartments comes due in the next four years, "and most of that is overleverage", said Michels, who is chairman of New Services.
       Mortgages investors are preparing to buy, he said.
       "The general feeling s things are a little more positive, whereas before the market was paralysed," Michaels said.
       The Moody's/Real Commercial Property Property Price index fell 5.1 per cent month on month in July, Moody's Investors Service said this week. It is down almost 39 per cent from its peak in October 2007. Commercial-property sales this year may fall to an 18-year low, the ratings company said.
       Property buyers will need to put down about two-thirds of the purchase price in equity to borrow at interest rates of 8-10 per cent, up from 4-6 per cent during the realestate boom, Michaels said.
       Carlton Advisory Services is starting an online exchange that will list loans and seized property on a website called the Carlton Exchange.
       The firm assisted developer Harry Macklowe in the 2004 refinancing of the General Motors Building on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue and arranged the financing for property investor Haim Revah's purchase of the Lipstick Building in Manhattan in 2007. It has also worked on financing for Chicago, lllinois's Sears Tower, now known as the Willis Tower, and the Bank of America Tower in San Francisco, California.