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Investment banking giant Goldman Sachs is getting ready to swallow lower values on its commercial real estate loans and equity investments.
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon told CNBC the firm will take impairment charges on commercial real estate assets on its books for the second quarter of the year. Those assets includes loans as well as a direct stake it has taken in some properties.
"There’s no question that the real estate market, and in particular commercial real estate, has come under pressure,” he said on the show Squawk on the Street. "You’ll see some impairments in the lending that would flow through our wholesale provision this quarter."
Solomon said those write-downs are a “headwind,” but manageable for the Manhattan-based bank, and suggested the issues would be a bigger hit to the smaller banks, with “bumps and pain” set to affect various players.
Goldman's loan issues aren't only related to the economy, but also the result of a billionaire's decision to have a company he bought stop paying rent.
Last quarter, the bank saw a jump in commercial real estate loan delinquency, with Twitter’s failure to pay rent a contributor to the problem, the Financial Times reported. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. reports Goldman filed showed commercial real estate borrowers behind on their loans to the tune of $840M in Q1, a 612% jump, according to FT.
Goldman was part of a group of lenders, including Citigroup and Deutsche Bank AG, that originated a $1.9B loan backing a seven-building office portfolio in four states to landlord Columbia Property Trust. Twitter is a tenant at a key building in that portfolio, 650 California St. in San Francisco, where Columbia claims it stopped paying rent.
The company said in a lawsuit filed in January that the Elon Musk-run firm owes $136,260 in unpaid rent for its 30th-floor space. Columbia served Twitter with a notice of default Dec. 16. In February, Columbia defaulted on the $1.7B in outstanding debt tied to the portfolio.
Goldman is also a lender and equity holder on an $841M CMBS loan backing seven office buildings in Arlington, Virginia, on which the sponsor, a joint venture of Goldman and Monday Properties, recently stopped making payments, Bisnow reported.
Goldman has more delinquent CRE loans than the American banking system at large, with more than 10% of its CRE loans in some form of delinquency, the FT reported.
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