According to S&P more than $2 trillion of commercial real estate mortgages will mature over the next two years. The average interest rate on maturing loans is only 4.3%. The rate today has doubled, making refinancing challenging. Also, roughly $200 billion of these mortgages are on office properties where the underlying value has collapsed. The size of the pool of distressed capital is much larger than the subprime mortgage market at its peak in 2005 at around $625 billion. The “extend and pretend” game that’s being played with the big banks only makes these problems worse because nobody knows where the toxic waste is buried.