You are right that that there are too many incentives for trusted players to delay acknowledging reality (even if people are quibbling with the word “ponzi”). I

You are right that that there are too many incentives for trusted players to delay acknowledging reality (even if people are quibbling with the word “ponzi”). I am reminded of the scenes in Big Short when the banks for some time refuse to acknowledge reality and write down their mortgage bond positions. Usually this sort of soft corruption is dealt with in real estate by incentives. For example the developer offers to pay your HOA fees for a year or two, or throw in some appliances, or whatever. The goal is always to artificially support a higher price through a back door discount that won’t devalue the whole building. There are commercial real estate equivalents to this like the developer paying for more customizations and improvements to the office space which are typically borne by tenants. But my reckoning is this downturn is way too big and fundamental for those stunts to be enough. If it’s true office real estate values have not been written down then I suspect we are in for a shit show when everyone is forced to acknowledge reality. (I am not in real estate but spoke regularly to industry folks and wrote reports during the last boom 2002-2008)