Corporate raider Carl Icahn has announced that he going short in a big way on commercial real estate.
Private equity has gone big into commercial and rental real estate, and so I am not surprised that ht thinks that this is unsustainable:
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn told CNBC on Friday he expects the U.S. commercial real estate market will crumble, much like the broader housing market collapse of 2008.
“You’re going to have this blow up, too, and nobody’s even looking at it,” Icahn said on “Halftime Report.”
Icahn said he is shorting the commercial mortgage bond market and it’s his “biggest position by far.”
Short selling is a bet against stocks or bonds, with shorts borrowing shares from an investment bank and selling them in hopes that the asset will lose value. If it does drop, shorts buy the shares back at a cheaper price and return them to the bank, turning a profit on the difference.
Icahn’s short is specific to credit default swaps, or “CDS,” which are assets that back mortgages of corporate offices and shopping malls. Icahn said the housing market bubble of 2008 has “happened all over again” due to loans made in 2012 to shopping malls and more.
Look out below.