Consequences of selected Basel III regulations for real estate developers - A systematic analysis with a case study

Masterarbeit aus dem Jahr 2013 im Fachbereich BWL - Investition und Finanzierung, Munich Business School, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: The high leveraged American real estate investment market dominated by speculators, brought about a global financial crisis of epic proportions in 2008. The global financial recession, which followed, highlighted a gloomy rate of interdependence in the banking world. It exposed the tight interconnection of the American real estate market and the structures of the global financial market (Panagopoulos et al. 2009, 2-4). In December 2010, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision published the report ''Basel III: A Global Regulatory Framework for More Resilient Banks and Banking Systems'' which will be implemented gradually across the European Union (among others) between 2013 and 2019 and supplements the existing International Convergence of Capital Measurement Document (Basel II) which was implemented in 2008 (Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, 2013). The reformed capital and liquidity requirements for banks, Basel III, is a response to the global financial crisis and represents a substantial step forward from its predecessor regime, Basel II which already based credit costs on the degree of risk. One of the most significant outcomes of Basel III will be the enormous rise in the banking industry's capital requirements and the rise in lending as well as borrowing costs (Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, 2013). Real estate developers heavily depend on debt capital for their projects and partake usually only with a small amount of equity capital in a project. If the access to bank loans will be limited or restricted in the future, developers will have to adapt their financing model to the new market conditions and challenges posed by Basel III and take other financing alternatives into consideration in order to decrease dependence on bank loans (Drucker, 2012). Other financing alternatives might also gain attraction if senior loans become more restricted or the securities or the equity required by the bank increase so much that the return on investment of real estate developers will make investments unprofitable or they might not able to provide these securities. They might not know how to proceed and restructure their financing model adapting it to a lower amount of senior debt. The increased loan documentation due to Basel III might take so long that the developer will not be able to realize the project viably anymore due to fast changing market conditions (Drucker, 2012).