Commercial mortgage-backed securities players were eagerly awaiting this week's Commercial Mortgage Securities Association convention in New York, as the $802 million PNC conduit's pricing was held off until after the industry-wide meeting in order to reap some of the benefits of the event.
"Since this is the most recent deal in the market, it is a smart move to launch it before a large conference like that," said one CMBS source. "This will be somewhat of a benchmark transaction. From a collateral perspective, there is a decent percent of multifamily, but not enough to get the government-sponsored enterprises involved. Judging how the Salomon Smith Barney deal is going right now, this should have better reception than that one."
The Salomon deal was set to price as of last Friday, with decent indications on the five-year, and the higher-credit single-A and double-A well spoken for. The price guidance for the five-year was at swaps+28-30 and the 9.14-year piece was at swaps + 40-42, and sources predicted that it will price on the wide side.
"These deals are not the most liquid, because it's not a standard Salomon deal," a source noted.
As for the upcoming CMSA conference, the hot topic of the hour is sure to be electronic trading for CMBS. Several sources noted that new dot-coms slated to put CMBS trading on the Web in a peer-to-peer paradigm (instead of a broker-to-client arrangement) have substantial venture capital money to do it.
