&gt; a business is not clearly safer or less safe a credit risk doing the movement described<p>Yes they are? The reason you&#x27;re thinking of the building as completely safe wrt to credit risk is that, if the company finds it can&#x27;t pay the loan on the building, it can sell it and hope to pay the loan that way. But that might not work! In the second scenario, that&#x27;s already been done, which eliminates the risk of being unable to sell the building for an amount that will cover the loan.