During the second quarter, $20.5B worth of office, multifamily and other property was seized, up 13% from the first three months of the year and the highest quarterly figure in nearly a decade, according to MSCI data first reported by The Wall Street Journal. In times of distress, such surges of foreclosure activity have historically been followed by market resets. Lenders, who don’t want the properties on their books, sell the real estate and set new comparisons for the rest of the market to adjust to. “Lenders are more dispassionate about values and that’s a sign of a cycle moving [toward a bottom]," Matt Pestronk, co-founder of development firm Post Brothers, told the WSJ. However, loan maturity dates creeping up indicates borrowers, especially with debt tied to office buildings, have more pain in the forecast.  More than $94B of commercial real estate debt was in distress at the end of June, with another $201B at risk, according to MSCI data reported by Bloomberg.  The growing amount of bad debt has banks preparing for battle. Deutsche Bank increased its loan loss provisions in the second quarter as its average loan-to-value of its U.S. office loan portfolio reached 81%. Blackstone Mortgage Trust slashed its dividend to allow it to deploy more capital and reduce office exposure." https://lnkd.in/e44R3qnG