The COVID-19 pandemic has brought widespread economic disruption and introduced uncertainty in the real estate capital markets over the past several months, similar to most other industries.
“The pandemic caused a sharp decline in the economy that did not leave the capital markets completely unscathed,” said Scott Lee, managing partner at Tauro Capital Advisors. “The CMBS market was hit the hardest. In April, almost all lending in the CMBS market stopped, followed by an influx in delinquencies in May and June.”
One of the factors affecting CMBS — a large percentage of hospitality loans were originated in the CMBS market, and hospitality was one of the industries that was most significantly impacted as travel, especially business travel, has evaporated amid the pandemic. STR recently reported U.S. hotel occupancy was 33.5 percent in the second quarter.
“That said, the CMBS mark