Cottage Cheese - Redux

Truly dedicated readers will recall the prediction that commerical real estate was skating on thin ice. Yes, they are.

Well, some of those chickens are now roosting in plain sight. And, as usual, the NYT has the numbers.

About 23 percent of office space in the United States was vacant or available for sublet at the end of November, according to Avison Young, a real estate services firm, compared with 16 percent before the pandemic.

So, what to do? What to do?

Office landlords, hit hard by the work-from-home revolution, are resorting to a desperate measure in the real estate world: "handing back the keys."

Well, as is obvious, that just means the owner just defaults on the loan(s). Would that civilians could get away with that:

But there's a difference: Big property companies can keep doing business after they default, and are even considered savvy for jettisoning distressed buildings.

Homeowners who stopped paying their mortgages, though, suffered a huge hit to their credit ratings and had to find somewhere else to live.