Commercial Real Estate Delinquencies Top 10% for First Time

05-19-2011 • Bloomberg.com

Delinquencies on commercial mortgages packaged and sold as bonds surpassed 10 percent for the first time last month, according to Morgan Stanley. Payments more than 30 days late jumped 26 basis points to 10.15 percent in April, Morgan Stanley analysts said in a report yesterday. While the pace of increase has slowed since the middle of last year, that’s partly because delinquencies are being offset as troubled loans are resolved. The rate of borrowers missing payments for the first time has been constant for the past four months, the analysts wrote. “The bottom line is that loan performance is not yet exhibiting significant improvement,” according to the analysts led by Richard Parkus in New York. “Many market participants have come to believe that credit deterioration is more or less over, and were caught off guard by April’s rise.” Delinquency rates for loans bundled into securities during the bubble years, when property values peaked amid lax underwriting, have reached 10.37 percent for 2006 deals and 13.26 percent for those in 2007, according to Morgan Stanley. Borrowers with maturing debt taken out during the boom are still struggling to retire loans, according to the report. About 63 percent of commercial mortgages in bonds scheduled to mature in April paid off on time. That rate dropped to 33 percent for loans taken out from 2005 through 2008, the analysts said.