April Fools

Every year, this date unassumingly sneaks up on most of us, and our co-workers, friends and family take delight in yanking our collective chain. Given the serious nature of our business and the credit and economic environment we find ourselves in today, we at Llenrock know that a little dose of gallows humor gets most of us through the week. With that in mind we'd like to spend today's blog post discussing some fun, cruel, April Fool's Jokes that could be played on the commercial real estate/financing community. Have Fun!

The Ideas....

1. It turns out that instead of Wells Fargo, Bernie Madoff is set to fund your deal that's supposed to close tomorrow. You know, the one in which you waived your financing contingency and have a $5,000,000 hard money deposit sitting in the seller's bank account already?


2. President Obama just increased the capital gains tax from 15% to 40% today. Didn't all 3 of your identified exchange properties just get pulled off the market?


3. Did you hear LIBOR just jumped 500 basis points? Aren't all your construction loans floating over LIBOR?


4. What was that REIT stock you were telling me about that you recently sold? Someone told me their quarterly earnings report just came out and they beat analysts' expectations by 400%. The stock is up from $0.08 to $1.56 this morning.


5. Hey you know the ______ deal that had environmental issues, a title discrepancy, that the bank wasn't going to fully fund? It closed!


6. The boss wants to see you in his office. NOW.


7. Tim Geithner 's on the phone for you. He says he is taking a survey regarding how the sweeping economic changes are affecting your 401(k). Should I put him through?


8. Did you hear Congress is making all public and private fund real estate operators mark-to-market their current portfolios? Instead of cash on cash return they are demanding your local residential REALTOR valuate the assets using comparable sales in the last 3 weeks.


9. Moody's just came out with a new credit rating vernacular. From now on, anything below AAA+ will be known as junk. Anything below BBB+ will be known as shit. Anything below B will be known as "Come on, are you f#$%ing serious?"


10. Turn on the TV! Barney Frank is currently holding a Senate Finance Committee meeting airing live on C-SPAN regarding how many licks it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop!


APRIL FOOLS!!!!!