The real estate arm of the Blackstone Group is looking to price its second securitization of commercial office and industrial properties for the month, in a $608.5 million conduit transaction being rated by Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings.
Brookfield Partners is sponsoring Benchmark 2020-IG3 Mortgage Trust, featuring nine fixed-rate loans secured by 144 commercial properties, including a portfolio of 68 warehouse and logistics facilities (BX Industrial Portfolio) owned and managed by the real estate investment trust.
The collateral includes several large-loan participations in large office buildings that have been included in previous CMBS deals — and excludes hotels and shopping-mall properties that have become particularly vulnerable to economic hardship due to the coronavirus outbreak, according to the presale reports.
Six of the commercial real-estate loans have being treated as investment-grade obligations, primarily through Class A office properties leased to corporate tenants such as Amazon, Google and Uber Technologies.
Nearly 78% of the properties are located in the major metro areas of San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Seattle.
Moody’s and Fitch have each assigned preliminary triple-A ratings to five classes of senior notes totaling $483.1 million. Fitch is also rating two subordinate tranches, a $59.4 million Class B offering (AA-) and a $22.23 million Class C tranche (A-).
Brookfield last week priced Benchmark 2020-IG2, via Deutsche Bank, a 12-loan portfolio backed by 79 commercial properties that included portions of CRE loans made in Benchmark 2020-IG3, including the loan for Tower 333 in Bellevue predominantly leased to Amazon. That deal was also primarily made up on loans with investment-grade structured credit assessments.
