NEW YORK - October 30, 2009 - Billionaire investor Wilbur L. Ross Jr. said today the U.S. is in the beginning of a “huge crash in commercial real estate.”

“All of the components of real estate value are going in the wrong direction simultaneously,” said Ross, one of nine money managers participating in a government program to remove toxic assets from bank balance sheets. “Occupancy rates are going down. Rent rates are going down and the capitalization rate - the return that investors are demanding to buy a property - are going up.”

U.S. commercial property sales are forecast to fall to their lowest level in almost two decades as the industry endures its worst slump since the savings and loan crisis of the early 1990s, according to property research firm Real Capital Analytics Inc. The Moody’s/REAL Commercial Property Price Indices already have fallen almost 41% since October 2007, Moody’s Investors Service said October 19.

Billionaire George Soros, speaking today at a lecture organized by the Central European University in Budapest, said a “bloodletting” might be coming for leveraged buyouts and commercial real estate.

“The Amerikan consumer will no longer be able to serve as the motor for the world economy,” said Soros, 79.

His comments came in the same week that Capmark Financial Group Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after originating $60 billion in commercial property loans in 2006 and 2007.