As feared by many, the buzz about the American commercial real estate market has turned more negative, as evidenced by online article posts, blogs, video, and other social media monitored by CREOpoint about the U.S. sovereign debt downgrade.
In their last 1,000 relevant online posts, commercial property professionals included words like “crisis” in more than three-quarters of all articles. The words “crash,” “panic” and “disaster” were mentioned 147, 80 and 64 times, respectively. Surprisingly, there was not much buzz about “home prices,” “inflation,” “REITs” or a “real estate bubble.”
With its downgrade decision, Standard & Poor’s has started a chain of events in the already battered Euro Zone. In addition to Greece, Ireland andSpain, one can now find new online discussions about Italy being too big to fail—or save. Germany, France to some extent and China are often mentioned as ultimate bailout sources.
The organizations creating the most online buzz about the debt ceiling were the U.S. government, S&P, Congress, the Republican and Democratic parties, the Fed, Moody’s and the New York Stock Exchange. More closely connected to our industry, a number of corresponding conversations were focused on Bank of America, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Goldman Sachs, the NAR and Wells Fargo, with most of the conversations being amplified on Twitter.
What will be the impact on consumer and business spending? None of it is creating jobs …
