Lord Rothschild’s advice to “buy when there is blood on the street” is perfectly apt in the bombed-out carnage of US office REITs, where stocks have fallen on a quantum scale more than the value of the underlying brick and mortar. Vacancy rates have spiked in the post-pandemic, remote/hybrid work zeitgeist of 2023, the Fed’s draconian monetary tightening has gutted valuations and the sector faces huge refinancing risk as 70% of all CRE loans are made by regional banks who can no longer underwrite the looming $2 trillion CRE debt maturity wall.

Money making opportunities have abounded in the carnage. Vornado (VNO), whose prime Manhattan office buildings traded at a 20% lower price per square foot than Dubai’s Business Bay in April was a no-brainer at 14 this spring after the panic that followed SVB’s failure/bailout. VNO surged to 25 before Powell’s FOMC tough love interest rate hiss last week whacked it to 22.40. You did not need the genius of a Soros/Buffett to have a 70% quicky profit in a mere 5 months on this office REIT fallen angel. All you had to do was to track the buy orders of the cognoscenti and follow the hoof beats of the herd.