Starwood Capital CEO Barry Sternlicht doesn’t hold back on his Federal Reserve criticism: On multiple occasions he’s told CNBC anchors that the central bank’s aggressive interest rate hikes could soon spur a deep recession.
It’s easy to see why Sternlicht is so openly critical of the Fed: Starwood primarily invests in real estate, where the Fed’s interest rate hikes have already caused a great deal of economic pain.
Last week, Bloomberg reported that Starwood Real Estate Income Trust plans to shop more than 2,000 single-family rentals. Starwood—which declined Fortune‘s interview request—hasn’t publicly explained its motive for pulling back from the residential housing market, where its REIT owns over 3,200 single-family homes. That said, it’s clear that the decision to shop these 2,000 homes comes as Starwood faces an uptick in redemption requests and endures pain in the commercial real estate sector.
At first glance, one might assume Wall Street types would pull back from the commercial real estate space—where office values are sinking fast—and instead pile into the residential housing market—where national home values are rising again after passing through a mild home price correction last fall.
However, institutional firms are also timid on the residential front. According to an analysis conducted by John Burns Research and Consulting, institutional investors—those owning over 1,000 homes—bought 90% fewer homes in January and February than they did in the first two months of 2022.
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Source: finance.yahoo.com
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