Late payments on loans included in commercial mortgage-backed securities climbed to the highest level ever recorded — though the pace of deterioration is losing steam.
Delinquency of at least 30 days, including foreclosures, on securitized commercial mortgages was 9.42 percent in March, Trepp LLC reported. That works out to around $62 billion in commercial real estate loans.
Delinquency rose — again — from 9.39 percent in February. It was the highest level of defaults in CMBS history.
The good news is that the 3-basis-point rise last month was smaller than the 5-basis-point increase in February. Trepp Managing Director Manus Clancy said that the latest findings represented “some of the best readings we’ve seen since the credit crisis began.”
Clancy predicts that while CMBS defaults will likely deteriorate over the next six months, the pace of increases won’t be “the 40 basis point jumps that we saw in 2009 and early 2010.”
He added that it is possible that CMBS delinquency could decline during one of the upcoming months.
Fueling March’s rise in overall lates was a 136-basis-point increase in delinquency on loans secured by hotels and lodging properties. Office loan delinquency was 3 BPS higher.
But the rate on multifamily CMBS was 40 BPS better — though it remains the worst-performing sector — while retail property loan delinquency was down 9 BPS and industrial delinquency was 19 BPS lower.
