Salt Lake City, UT / January 21, 2010 / --  Local bankers and investors are scouring the commercial real estate markets in hopes of finding diamonds in the rough but many are finding that the real deals have already been snapped up by foreign banks and investors.  

As some of the biggest financial institutions in the US continue to deal with the slow paralysis of failed residential mortgages few if any have shown signs for a hearty appetite of commercial mortgage backed-securities.  But unlike their foreign counterparts according to data from CB Richard Ellis, foreign banks are now providing more than 60 percent of all debt financing for commercial real estate.    

Xiaojing Li, Bank of China's general manager for the US said, "Our Beijing head office is encouraging overseas branches to get into the local lending as long as we control the risk." But its the risk of commercial real estate transactions that have many fearing yet another collapse possibly even bigger than the one first felt by the  US residential market.  

Michael Blackburn, COO and National Fraud Trainer at Perfect Home Living, a nonprofit organization that reconstructs real estate transactions to learn how and where real estate fraud occurs said that financial institutions that jump into real estate transactions on the back-end are more likely to be victimized than the original lender.  "Lenders that bear the weight of bad debt are quick to let that debt be consumed by institutions that are less informed about true market conditions, existing vendor relationships or even the existence of fraud," Blackburn continued.

But with lenders like Bank of China they have no non-performing loans in real estate and the risk of commercial lending is not as threatening for them as it is for their US counterparts, mainly because foreign banks like Bank of China hold loans until maturity.  In this economic climate most commercial lenders are not entertaining commitments of $50m-$100m, but institutions like Bank of China are actively seeking those ranges and more. 

About Perfect Home Living 

Perfect Home Living is a nationally recognized non-profit leader that assists in implementing programs and providing training and education to financial lenders, government entities, banking regulators, consumers and licensed professionals to red flags within today's  real estate market.   For more information or to request assistance please visit us online at:  http://www.PerfectHomeLiving.com or email trainingschedule@perfecthomeliving.com