Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo are preparing to issue the first commercial MBS that will comply with risk-retention requirements, according to presale reports published this week. While industry participants continue to debate which type of risk-retention will be more commonly used, the pending $870.56 million MBS will include vertical retention. Wells Fargo Commercial Mortgage Trust 2016-BNK1 received provisional AAA ratings from Fitch Ratings, Kroll Bond Rating Agency and Standard & Poor’s. Fitch said the three originators contributing to the MBS will retain credit risk representing 5.0 percent of pool balance via the vertical retention option. Risk-retention requirements for commercial MBS take effect...
New issuance of non-agency commercial MBS fell dramatically during the second quarter of 2016, more than offsetting a modest uptick in the production of agency multifamily MBS, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. Non-agency CMBS issuance fell to just $12.87 billion in the second quarter, a 29.5 percent drop from the first three months of the year. It was the lowest quarterly output of new CMBS since the second quarter of 2012, when just $10.63 billion of new securities were issued and the market was still finding its legs after the financial meltdown. New CMBS issuance has been...[Includes one data table]
Industry experts agree that the commercial MBS market is not going to live up to expectations of $100 billion of issuance this year, but they are hopeful the market will rebound after the industry fully implements the Dodd-Frank Act risk-retention rules that take effect Dec. 24, 2016. According to Kenneth Cheng, managing director of CMBS ratings services for Morningstar Credit Ratings, there is much uncertainty in the CMBS market about the actual impact of the risk-retention requirements. “I think everybody has agreed that it will be a negative impact – it’s just the magnitude of that impact that is uncertain,” he told Inside MBS & ABS this week. “It’s going to drive up the cost of CMBS – how much is anybody’s guess.” Also, as the cost of issuing CMBS increases, profit margins will...
A new fund has been created to encourage investments in the dwindling supply of single-family and multifamily affordable-housing options. Ten banks have contributed to the $25 million Community Development Fund since it opened in February. The fund will invest primarily in securities issued or guaranteed by the U.S. government or its agencies, and other investment grade fixed-income securities. In normal circumstances, the fund plans to invest at least 90 percent of its net assets in debt securities and other debt instruments that the fund’s advisor deems would qualify under the Community Reinvestment Act. Ken Thomas, president of Community Development Fund Advisors in Miami, set up...
Mortgage bankers that trade in the to-be-announced MBS market will be exempt from the initial margin requirements associated with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s revised Rule 4210, which was approved by an order of the Securities and Exchange Commission last week. Under the rule, as amended now three times by FINRA, market participants who trade TBAs will have to post an initial “maintenance” margin of 2 percent of net position size, along with an on-going variation margin, which will be subject to a $250,000 minimum transfer amount. However, the SEC order provided...
With time ticking toward a Dec. 24 compliance date, issuers of commercial MBS continue to try to develop structures that will meet risk-retention requirements. Richard Jones, a partner at the Dechert law firm, warned that the industry is “in trouble.” In an analysis published this month, he wrote, “We as an industry don’t have a scalable solution to the problem. We … do not know what this will cost, who will pay for it, and to what extent this is an existential risk to commercial real estate capital formation as it has been conducted for the past 25 years.” He noted...
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