by Calculated Risk on 6/10/2009 11:27:00 AM

From Lingling Wei and Kris Hudson: Relief for Commercial Real-Estate Debt? It Seems Possible

... developers and investors complain that only those who are delinquent can talk to servicers of ... CMBS. But now the Treasury is considering issuing guidance that would allow servicers to start talking about ways to avoid defaults and foreclosures sooner, possibly at least two years ahead of the maturity date of a loan ... The Treasury guidance, which could be released within weeks, would essentially enable loan-modification talks to take place without triggering tax consequences ... when CMBS offerings are created, the underlying mortgages are legally held by tax-free trusts. The trusts can be forced to pay taxes if the underlying loans are modified before they become delinquent, according to current CMBS rules.
...
Of particular concern is $154.5 billion of CMBS loans coming due between now and 2012. About two-thirds of that likely won't qualify for refinancing, according to a recent report by Deutsche Bank. The bank projected that the default rates on the $700 billion of outstanding CMBS eventually could hit at least 30%, and loss rates, which take into account the amounts recovered by lenders, could reach as much as 13%, more than the peak seen during the commercial-real-estate collapse of the early 1990s.

This is a follow up to:

S&P on CMBS: Potential Downgrades from AAA to A

CRE Mortgage Servicers Seek up to 5 Year Extensions (with Fitch comments)

From Bloomberg: U.S. Commercial Mortgage Defaults May Rise to 17-Year High