Negative equity widespread in UK commercial property...

Not the best of news for the UK commercial property sector.

According to an article on the BBC news website around a week ago, there could be up to around £50bn of negative equity in the commercial property sector - a high number indeed!

The value of shopping centres really went up in the boom years with so much money going into the property but now many units are lying empty and prices have taken a bit of a battering.

The report says that many shopping centres are now worth less than the actual size of the loans from the banks that let the owners buy them when times were good - this is more miserable news for the banks in turn!

The full article is here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8504770.stm

Re : Negative equity widespread in UK commercial property

Interesting article - the BBC do manage to have them from time to time!

The commercial property sector seems to be a bit of a contradiction in terms at the moment; for every good story there is a horror story, and for every person who is bullish about the future of the sector in the short term there is someone else who cautions that things could yet get worse again very easily. I guess the truth is that no-one knows!