Bloomberg Interview With Sam Zell: The Credit Crisis

Sam Zell, a self-proclaimed "professional opportunist," founded his privately-held firm with a fraternity brother in 1968. The two bought up cheap real estate throughout the U.S. from distressed owners, and then kept buying when values recovered and boomed.

In this interview, he speaks about the need to support Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) debt, at the expense of shareholders, and the opportunities he now sees in the distressed debt sector.

He says real estate is "fairly" priced (not overpriced) and that his focus on investing in distressed debt is just a natural outgrowth of his focus on value - he sees more of it in the debt than he does in the equity. He also says that the credit crisis has virtually shut down all new apartment development (he is also Chairman of Equity Residential (EQR), a large publicly-traded apartment REIT), so that from a supply standpoint things look very good in apartments, and demand obviously will be driven by all those former homeowners who can no longer get "liar" loans.

Disclosures: None at the time of this writing