Jeff Greene warns about US real estate, made fortune from last crash

A real-estate billionaire who made a fortune shorting the mid-2000s housing bubble is bracing for another painful downturn.

A real-estate billionaire who made a fortune shorting the mid-2000s housing bubble is bracing for another painful downturn.

"We are heading into a very frightening time in the entire real-estate industry," Jeff Greene warned in a Fox Business interview on Friday. He said many businesses and consumers would fall behind on their rent and mortgage payments because of higher interest rates and struggle to secure financing as banks pull back from lending.

Greene said that the pain in commercial real estate was only just beginning. Some parts of the heavily leveraged sector face crippling debt costs and a credit crunch, pressure on asset values, and a structural shift toward remote and hybrid working.

"What's happening in office space today? This is before the slowdown," he said. "Wait until we have the recession."

The real-estate tycoon added that historic amounts of fiscal and monetary stimulus during the pandemic were still shoring up demand and employment in the US economy, staving off a surge in late payments and foreclosures. However, he said that companies would pare their workforces and office spaces as the economic picture darkened and higher borrowing costs squeezed them.