SEC Ruling a Victory for Transparency

The SEC announced new rules a few weeks ago regarding structured finance and securitization. One rule was covered extensively in the press and has been criticized as more “extend and pretend.” The other, which was not as well covered, is a huge victory for those of us seeking more CMBS transparency. The well-covered rule granted […]

Reporting from the Dealmakers Summit

I just finished up two days attending the Dealmakers Summit sponsored by Institutional Real Estate. It was held in San Diego and featured senior players primarily from the equity side of the business — owners, pension fund advisors, brokers, and consultants. The mood was generally pessimistic, especially after hearing from the economists (CRE fundamentals would continue […]

MISMO Update

We had a very active MISMO Council of Chairs call on Tuesday. IRP 6, rent rolls in XML and transparency where all being discussed. We had a “special guest” — a master servicer who gave us perspective on the challenges of getting the standards adopted.

Standards (Draft)!

The MISMO rent roll and operating statement standards committee has finished the proposed schema for the two reports. (Keep reading to download the Excel workbook.)

IRP Article in Debtwire

A recent article published by Debtwire addresses the IRP 6 issue. It’s the first time I’ve seen anything about this in mainstream news; that’s a good sign that more people are starting to pay attention to this issue. Here is the article: New CMSA IRP in flux; opposition from executives by Sarika Gangar sarika.gangar@debtwire.com www.debtwire.com A new […]

Good progress on MISMO standards

We had a third committee call today on the MISMO Rent Roll and Operating Statement Standards Committee. We have had 15-20 people on all the calls. The first two focused on the rent roll; this one focused on operating statements. We are making good progress and have basically finished up the rent roll and operating […]

Geithner Proposal a Mixed Bag

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s proposal to “fix” securitization was released last week, and it is a mixed bag for CMBS. On the positive side, he stated the SEC should promote increased transparency for both the deals and the rating agency methodology used to rate the deals. The best line was “Investors and credit rating agencies […]

More XML discussion with no movement

Monday’s IRP Committee Meeting at the annual CMSA conference was more talk and no action. There were about 100 people in the room including many investors and servicers, which highlighted the importance of the topic. The committee heads gave a good summary of the IRP process and why it is no longer being pursued. Then […]

17 Firms call in for XML kick off – CMSA next week

We had the kick-off call for the rent roll and operating statement standards making committee yesterday, and 17 firms called in representing CMBS issuers, banks, insurance companies, rating agencies, servicers and data providers. I was encouraged by the attendance number and the productive conversation. We made good progress through rent rolls and got started on […]