CMBS

Last year, securitization players found themselves stumbling towards recovery, as new regulations and a weak economy posed one hurdle after another for deal makers.

Casting a cloud over the CMBS sector for 2012 is an overhang of about $55 billion in CMBS loans that are coming up for refinancing. Industry participants are watching to see how these loans will fare. These mortgages form part of an estimated total of $365 billion in commercial real estate-backed loans coming due in 2012, according to CMBS data provider Trepp.

According to Standard & Poor's 2012 CMBS outlook, as much as 63% of $19 billion in 2007 vintage five-year CMBS loans coming due in 2012 could fail to refinance in case borrowers are not willing to put in additional equity. The rating agency bases its estimate on the $13.3 billion of these five-year CMBS loans for which S&P has adequate net operating income data. Based on this balance, S&P expects about $7 billion to $8 billion of 2007 vintage loans to face refinancing difficulties.

Sears Holdings Corp. announced on Dec. 27 that it is closing up to 120 Kmart & Sears full-line stores.

Federal regulators are seeking comment on a proposal that aims to lessen banks' reliance on credit ratings by proposing three methods for assessing risk on firms' trading books.

Investors behind three CDOs – Cedarwoods CRE CDO III, Concord Real Estate CDO 2006-1 and Resource Real Estate Funding CDO 2006-1 – filed a lawsuit this week to block a junior lender from exercising the fair value purchase option on the $150 million defaulted loan secured by JW Marriott Las Vegas Resort & Spa securitized in CSMC 2007-TFLA, according to a New York court filing.

There is little risk of a negative impact on CMBS from the closure of 100 to 120 Sears and Kmart stores under the U.S. Sears Holdings Corp., according to a Fitch Ratings report.

BTG Pactual, through its retail banking unit Banco PanAmericano, signed a non-binding agreement to acquire Brazilian Finance & Real Estate (BFRE), which specializes in property and real estate securitization.

Cantor Fitzgerald yesterday filed a form S-3 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to issue CMBS under its CCRE Commercial Mortgage Securities trust.

The combined value of loans in CMBS pools hardly budged from October to November, according to data released today from DebtX. Based on loans that the advisory firm prices, the figure at the end of November was 85.2%, from 85.3% on Oct. 31.