CMBS 4.0 project announced at CREFC Conference, which was surprisingly upbeat

I just returned from New York from the annual CREFC conference. Compared to the last gathering in January 2024 in Miami, the mood was generally glass-half-full.

Maybe everyone was in a good mood because the trade organization was celebrating 30 years, or because Trevor Noah did an amazing job talking about the power of diversity to a room full of bankers. But I think it had more to do with the CMBS new issuance market having its moment. With the banks and private lenders pulling back, the CMBS market has been filling the void and having a good year — especially traditional conduit.  So, with all the concern about SASB losses and obsolete office buildings, the traditional conduit market remains open.

The most interesting thing was a new project called CMBS 4.0. From what I understand, CMBS 4.0 is the trade group looking at how it works and committing to improving. CREFC pursuing change is a very positive development. I will get involved to see if there is any appetite to include rent roll disclosure and an updated data format for the IRP as part of the project. Maybe the risk in office loans is enough to motivate the change?

Jim Flaherty

Checking in on 9/11

Today marks the 22nd anniversary of 9/11 and the 15th anniversary of this blog. If you read the first post you’ll see how the events of 9/11 are part of our founding story:

The history of Backshop and CMBS.com

The anniversary of 9/11 always gets me thinking about the formation of this company and the state of our industry.

The CRE debt markets have been slow with higher interest rates, rising costs, and decreasing values. It is possible, if we get another significant down cycle and bond losses, there could be an opportunity to revisit the IRP disclosures. Rent rolls are key to understanding risk, especially for an office building, where there is high risk for severe losses. Right now seems like the calm before the storm.

Jim Flaherty

Automate your quarterly CMBS servicer reporting

I hope this post finds you healthy, prosperous and vaccinated. Gratefully, we are all three here. There’s been a lot going on, and I’ve not posted in a while, so here is the update.

We launched our dedicated tool for CMBS borrowers to support their quarterly servicer reporting requirements. If you have a CMBS loan, you can easily find your loan in our CMBS database, then we pre-load all the loan, servicer and property information — including all the operating statements that you have submitted to your servicer.

So, if you have had your CMBS loan for 5 years and you sign up for CMBS.com, once you find and load your deal, you will see 20 operating statements (4 per year for 5 years). For your 21st submission, modify the last one you sent and send in the new one through our system. Going forward, the process will be automated.

For rent rolls, since they are not part of the IRP, you will have to upload the first one and then let our tool automate it from there.

For more details about automated quarterly CMBS servicer reporting, check out our help pages for CMBS Borrower Reporting.

Speaking of rent rolls, if you are a reader of this blog you know I believe they need to be disclosed as part of CMBS transactions, and it turns out I am not the only one. In my last post, I talked about the whistle blower complaint and the University of Texas study about lenders inflating the income on properties. I recently came across this interview. Starting at about 3:30 is a pretty good description of how CMBS “liar loans” are made.

To be clear, using our new CMBS borrower reporting tool does not mean your rent rolls will be disclosed to the investors or the public. It just automates the submission to your servicer, who will only disclose what is in the IRP. But the issue of rent roll disclosure is a story that is not going away.

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Jim Flaherty is CEO of CMBS.com and the creator of the Backshop loan origination system. He is a trained credit professional with experience installing enterprise underwriting systems for commercial real estate lenders and investors.