Pretend and Extend coming to an end | Real Capital Analytics

Apartment Finance Today reports: Time is money, as the saying goes, but in some cases, biding your time is the richest strategy of all.

Throughout the downturn, the common practice of “extend and pretend,” where lenders hoped to delay the inevitable demise of troubled assets, was widely derided by distress hunters. After all, critics said, lenders were just kicking the can down the road, building a weak dam of false hope to hold back a flood of distress.

But even the staunchest critics would have to agree that extend and pretend actually worked. The swift rebound in values and continually improving capital markets gave lenders and troubled owners a way out this year, probably sooner than they could have hoped.

As a result, the 2011 Deals of the Year, a who’s who of large, distressed portfolios, signaled the endgame of extend and pretend.

At the starting line are overleveraged owners that bought at the height of the upturn and have since bought nothing but time. And waiting at the finish line is a bevy of hungry private investors, lured by the prospect of above-average returns on complicated capital restructuring deals.

“Extend and pretend allowed this to drag out, and now we’re starting to see a steady flow of distressed portfolios come to market,” says Dan Fasulo, managing director of global property research firm Real Capital Analytics. “There’s a window of opportunity now. And I think that will increase moving forward."

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