Coverage
A vast auto dealership is empty in Oakland, visible from the freeway. In Pittsburg, a big housing development looms over a downtown street, unfinished and vacant. Hotels in Brentwood and Oakland are isolated behind cyclone fences. A mammoth residential development is idle next to the Caldecott Tunnel.
These troubled projects all are mute testimony to a financial malaise that first sickened the housing market and has now infected a broader part of the wheezing regional economy.
During a half-year period stretching from October through the end of March, mortgages totaling $784 million have slumped into default for dozens of commercial or development properties, including some huge residential subdivisions, in the East Bay.
"The commercial real estate shoe has dropped, and it is sitting on the ground crying," said Christopher Thornberg, partner and economist with Beacon Economics. "This is a huge problem."