mREITs Operating in Healthy Risk-Return Environment: Green Street’s Harsh Hemnani

Harsh Hemnani, senior debt research analyst at Green Street, joined the REIT Report podcast to review current trends across the commercial and residential mortgage REIT (mREIT) sector.Hemnani discussed the size and breakdown of the mREIT market, the current operating environment, macroeconomic forces impacting performance, valuation and total returns for MREITs, risk profiles, and the outlook for the sector over the next 12 to 24 months.Commercial mREITs are able to underwrite idiosyncratic, property-level risk, Hemnani said. Not only can they execute the loan quicker than other lenders, but they also provide certainty as to who the loan counterparty will be throughout the life of the loan. “mREITs take out that uncertainty and that’s the value proposition they provide to the commercial real estate market,” he noted.Hemnani described the backdrop for commercial mREITs today as encouraging. “If you think about commercial real estate credit, it's fairly attractive on a risk adjusted basis. Property values have declined roughly 20% from their peak and they seem to have stabilized. So the risk of a broad-based property value decline from there is fairly low.”