- Property billionaire Jeff Greene has sounded the alarm on commercial real estate.
- Offices will be hit hard if recession strikes and AI eliminates some white-collar jobs, he said.
- Greene pocketed about $800 million by predicting and betting against the mid-2000s housing bubble.
A real estate billionaire who made a fortune shorting the mid-2000s housing bubble is bracing for another painful downturn.
“We are heading into a very frightening time in the entire real estate industry,” Jeff Greene warned in a Fox Business interview on Friday. He predicted that many businesses and consumers would fall behind on their rent and mortgage payments as higher interest rates bite, and struggle to secure financing as banks pull back from lending.
Greene cautioned that the pain in commercial real estate is only just beginning. Some parts of the heavily leveraged sector face not just crippling debt costs and a credit crunch, but also pressure on asset values and a structural shift toward remote and hybrid working.
“What’s happening in office space today, this is before the slowdown,” he said. “Wait until we have the recession.”
