{"id":28553,"date":"2020-08-13T14:30:16","date_gmt":"2020-08-13T11:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.commercialcafe.com\/blog\/?p=28553"},"modified":"2025-03-25T14:36:52","modified_gmt":"2025-03-25T11:36:52","slug":"expert-insights-chris-thornberg-accelerating-macro-trends-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.commercialcafe.com\/blog\/expert-insights-chris-thornberg-accelerating-macro-trends-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Expert Insights: Chris Thornberg on the Macro Trends the Pandemic is Accelerating"},"content":{"rendered":"

Large forces shape our world, but they\u2019re perpetuated by lots of small instances happening quickly. No time in recent history has this been more apparent than 2020, and commercial real estate (CRE) is just as caught up in the whirlwind as every other industry.<\/p>\n

Chris Thornberg is a founding partner at Beacon Economics and also the Director of the Center for Economic Forecasting and Development at the UC Riverside School of Business. Chris recently sat down with us to explain the macro trends that are being accelerated by the pandemic and how this recession differs from those of the past.<\/p>\n

The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n

Tell us a little bit about yourself, Chris.<\/h2>\n

I\u2019m not a CRE economist and I\u2019ve never really billed myself as such. But you can\u2019t be a macro economist without talking about real estate. That is by far and away the most cyclical part of the economy. As such it\u2019s something you have to become.<\/p>\n

I did my PhD, and started a career as a typical academic economist. I then got a job with a great economist department at Clemson University. As much as I enjoyed the other faculty members there, and I learned a lot, it wasn\u2019t for me. My former dissertation advisor invited me back to UCLA to work with him at the UCLA Anderson Forecast, and that\u2019s where I really cut my teeth on this intersection between what I would call academic rigor and public conversation.<\/p>\n

I immediately found a niche and that niche was \u201cthe official clothing critic for the emperor\u201d so to speak. Over the years, blowing up people\u2019s conventional wisdoms can become an attractive hobby to the point where you might start making stuff up just for the sake of notoriety, but I\u2019ve never had to do that. Eventually my relationship with UCLA became tenuous. Being a lecturer at a giant university is a fairly precarious position and there reached a point where I was done.<\/p>\n

So, I left and started Beacon Economics in mid-2006. Made the recession call. Now I have 20+ people. We work largely in California, but we venture out of state quite often, doing national stuff, and we’re all over the map. We obviously do policy studies, impact studies, CRE studies, all sorts of different things. It\u2019s fun. It\u2019s exciting, and we learn something new every day, and I feel like we\u2019re having a real impact. We\u2019re known as straight shooters. You might not like what we\u2019re saying, but you know we\u2019re saying it out of honesty.<\/p>\n

How do you see CRE in California differently than you do across the nation?<\/h2>\n

I don\u2019t. I think it\u2019s a mistake to think that state by state markets are vastly different. Obviously, place-by-place have different policy differences, but I\u2019ve always pushed back on this idea of business climate. California has a lot of upsides. The basic drivers of CRE, which is functionally supply and demand, are just applicable here as everywhere. So, I don\u2019t see a lot of difference there. Except for maybe the natural trends that are impacting real estate may be more intense in California because of some of the choices we\u2019ve made from a policy perspective in this state.<\/p>\n

What challenges do you see in the short-term for CRE?<\/h2>\n

Obviously, we have to remember we\u2019re in a recession, and this is truly an unexpected recession. At the beginning of 2019, many economists said we were going to have a recession by the end of 2020, because the trade war was going to demolish manufacturing, inflation was on the rise and interest rates were going to spike. Let\u2019s not forget that real estate was melting down too. To me, it was yet another head fake. Well here we are, and we are in the first virus led recession in the US. It came out of left field, and we\u2019re still grappling with this and getting a handle on it.<\/p>\n

For the most part, a lot of economists out there have come out and told us that this is going to be worse than the Great Recession, and again, no. The two worst recessions in U.S. economic history \u2014 Great Depression and Great Recession \u2014 were cycles that followed the collapse of massive financial bubbles. Financial bubbles lead to the worst type of recessions. They just do, because typically when the financial bubble is inflating, it causes parts of the economy to grow to levels that are unsustainable. In the US, you had a $15T in debt from 2001-2006 and that caused, of course, the housing market to go vastly beyond where it was. Lots of households picked up way more debt than they should have. Consumer spending was way beyond anything sustainable, and when I made that recession call, it wasn\u2019t even a recession call based on the trends.<\/p>\n

Candidly, by mid-2006, the wheels are already falling off the sub-prime train, and it was nasty because of the restructuring of the economy and the permanent shrinkage of retail, housing and construction. It\u2019s as dramatic as what we\u2019ve seen in the economy today with millions of people out of work, the big decline in the number of jobs \u2014 but there is nothing permanent in this. We didn\u2019t lose anything. The jobs are right there, they\u2019re just on the other side of the public health profession.<\/p>\n

Now clearly damage is being done, but a lot of that damage is being done because businesses are closing, and people aren\u2019t working. It\u2019s more than being compensated for by government intervention. Indeed, from February to April, for every dollar of lost income the government gave back $2. So, on net, this is not a long run scenario the way the Great Recession was, and the quicker this virus goes away, the quicker this economy gets back up and running. I think trends suggest that it may not be quite as quick as I thought, but I nevertheless think that this virus is going to be largely under control. I think mandates will be largely lifted by the end of the year, and I expect the US economy to be very close to where it was at the start of the year by the end of the year. Now what that means is one of the most dramatically short and dramatically sharpest recessions we\u2019ve ever seen.<\/p>\n

Real estate is a long run asset. This is not a long run cycle. The pain in CRE and the pain in residential real estate we saw during the Great Recession was driven by the financial shenanigans that went on in the lead up to that downturn. Functionally speaking, these markets are about as solid as they\u2019ve been in 30 years in part because of the restrictions put on lending after the Great Recession. So, as such, I don\u2019t see a lot of shift. There\u2019s a lot of negotiating going on right now. It\u2019s a very interesting world. I don\u2019t think you\u2019re going to end up any place a lot different than where we\u2019re at right now from a cap rate perspective or a vacancy perspective or anything else. Outside of a few exceptions, I think.<\/p>\n

Probably the one place that isn\u2019t true is retail. The one thing the recession is doing is hastening some of the long-term trends, and there\u2019s a few of them out there. In the case of retail, obviously it\u2019s the Internet. In fact, the U.S. has, on a per capita basis, somewhere around four to five times as much retail space<\/a> as Europe or Asia. We don\u2019t need this much retail, but a lot of local governments rely on it, so they\u2019re just not willing to rezone. And a lot of retailers that were already on the doorstep of bankruptcy are going under. Remember that all them aren\u2019t going bankrupt because of the recession. They\u2019re going bankrupt because of the long-term trends.<\/p>\n

Office space has been a really interesting watch for me over the last few years. One of the trends we\u2019ve noticed has to do with where you\u2019re seeing the best pace of rent increases. And the answer is that you\u2019re not seeing them in markets with declining vacancy rates. It is not a supply driven office market.<\/p>\n

So, markets that are seeing big increases in rent are seeing them because they\u2019re building new product. But the new product isn\u2019t filling a supply need, it\u2019s replacing old supply. You look at a place like San Francisco, it\u2019s such a great example. They\u2019re building all sorts of new office buildings. They haven\u2019t seen any decline in vacancy rates from the levels they saw right after the Great Recession. Why are they building? The unemployment rate prior to this in San Francisco was like 2.3% or 2.2%. It\u2019s an incredibly tight labor market. Housing is in short supply. Every company is in a fight for the best employees, and the way to get a good employee is to have a nice office. So, they\u2019re building new things that are 75-80% pre-leased before they even put a stick in the ground. All of these new companies move in and the old stuff gets emptied out. What does the government do with that old stock? And that\u2019s tough, because cities want commercial.<\/p>\n

Do you think the satellite office trend in the suburbs, that can absorb some of that space, will take off?<\/h2>\n

A lot of people are working from home and it\u2019s becoming part of the management system and part of the workflow. We\u2019re starting to realize that it isn\u2019t the end of the world, nor is it the end of office space either. You still want to be in rooms. You\u2019re still lacking innovation. I don\u2019t think you\u2019re as productive, and I think even workers are sick to death of sitting their house.<\/p>\n

We need office space. But it\u2019s going to hasten that process of reactive use. Yes, I do think you\u2019re going to see employers looking for smaller footprints. Will they go to more satellite offices? Intriguing. I don\u2019t know. It would be nice. I think it would be really interesting for companies that are bringing in lots of people. They haven\u2019t done so. I think from an operations and managerial standpoint, it\u2019s always seemed as a bit of a daunting challenge. It\u2019s a possibility.<\/p>\n

Another reason I\u2019m not worried about CRE in this cycle. As far as cycles go, this has been a really moderate cycle for CRE. Usually, when you\u2019re in the eighth, nineth, tenth year of a cycle, that\u2019s when CRE is going a little crazy. There’s lot of people taking long risk. Never happened this time. Never had a huge spike in production. In fact, the market had cooled off. In 2019, you saw a slowdown in investments in new commercial structures. But we came into this recession with a market that was already reasonably subdued both from a financial and a construction standpoint. It wasn\u2019t due for any kind of collapse, and that\u2019s an important point as well.<\/p>\n

Do you think that\u2019s because the Great Recession has had a \u201cgun-shy\u201d effect?<\/h2>\n

I think so. I remember in 2007 when I was running around being Dr. Doom and talking about the end of the world, and I had a lot of commercial guys get up in my craw. I remember even two years, 2017-2018, I would go to these commercial things and I typically used to be the pessimistic economist. Things were fine. It\u2019s been a really weird cycle.<\/p>\n

So, the 2009 recession was caused by fundamental, systemic problems, but 2020 is from something biological that is difficult to control?<\/h2>\n

You know what this boils down to? There\u2019s an old picture of the general sitting on his horse facing the butt-end, \u201cThe General Always Fights the Last War\u201d. That\u2019s exactly right. You think about where we were at during the Great Recession \u2014 the previous two recessions had been barely anything. We had that relatively mild early-90s recession and the tech bubble that popped and didn\u2019t mean much \u2014 barely a recession. This time around, everyone is still looking for the Great Recession. No matter what happens, it\u2019s the Great Recession. But you have to be a little more nuanced. You\u2019ve got to be a little bit better study of history. You have to recognize that recessions just don\u2019t look like the last one. Every recession is a little bit different in its own way, and you have to consider the factors that are creating that recession to have a sense of how bad it\u2019s going to be.<\/p>\n

We were pre-mania stage leading into the pandemic. What do you make of the dip buying and the mania-type environment we\u2019re in now?<\/h2>\n

The savings rate<\/a> went to some insane number \u2014 33% \u2014 which is just crazy in April. So, you have a bunch of people who can\u2019t shop, can\u2019t go out, can\u2019t go on vacation, you got tons of money, so is it a surprise that everyone is tossing money at every investment in sight? It doesn\u2019t surprise me at all.<\/p>\n

Now, what I think the clever investors in this cycle are seeing, and I think it\u2019s reasonable to say, is that you have a world in which everybody is sitting on a bunch of cash, but things aren\u2019t going to come back exactly the same. While I say most of what we\u2019ve seen go away is going to come back, that doesn\u2019t mean all. We\u2019re not going to be completely whole by the end of the year. There are a lot of boutique hotels. Some people were taking some risks, but no one is going to walk away right now. There\u2019s no point. You\u2019ve got your PPP loan. Your people aren\u2019t going anywhere. You wait it out. The smart money seems to be thinking this is actually a good study of history, because typically commercial is a big lagging part of the economy, smart money says that if you\u2019re looking to pick up the deals, it\u2019s Q4\/Q1, not now. I presume there\u2019s a lot of people out there pulling money together and waiting. Unlike the Great Recession where there was probably more supply of assets than there was demand, this time around I have a feeling there\u2019s going to be more demand for assets than there is supply, and as such, I don\u2019t see a big dip.<\/p>\n

Is there anything you\u2019d like to add?<\/h2>\n

Just something to throw in there, obviously, credit markets were disrupted, but the Fed has pretty much taken care of that. In the Great Recession, fiscal policy was too little, too late. This time around, it\u2019s too much, too soon. I say it\u2019s too much because it\u2019s too much, and it\u2019s too soon because they didn\u2019t actually figure out better ways of doing it or wait to see where the problems actually arose.<\/p>\n

Now, there are potentially serious downsides. In the U.S. in a typical year, total debt \u2014 federal, state\/local, private, consumer \u2014 expands by $3-$4 trillion. This year, you have the federal government by itself picking up $3-$4 trillion dollars. A real question that everyone should be asking \u2014 What does this mean for credit markets towards the end of the year? Commercial real estate relies on debt. It\u2019s going to be really interesting to see where this thing shakes out when the government is just hoovering up capital.<\/p>\n

I know there\u2019s a lot of money sitting on the sidelines. Is there that much money sitting on the sidelines? It\u2019s going to be one of the questions here that we don\u2019t really have an answer to, because we\u2019ve never been in a situation where the government has borrowed this much in a single year. We\u2019re borrowing more as percentage of GDP than we were during WWII. It\u2019s nuts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Large forces shape our world, but they\u2019re perpetuated by lots of small instances happening quickly. No time in recent history has this been more apparent than 2020, and commercial real estate (CRE) is just as caught up in the whirlwind as every other industry. 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