From the monthly archives:

April 2008

What’s The Rub With RAS?

April 24, 2008

Things are looking up… The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that investors and issuers of commercial mortgage-backed securities have something to cheer about for a change: The CMBX, a two-year-old credit-market index that has been heavily influencing CMBS prices, has been on a tear since late March. As REITwrecks wrote earlier, the index had been […]

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Conservative Investors: Apartment REITs Offer Safety Amid Market Turmoil

April 23, 2008

Despite the industry wide turmoil in REITs and real estate, the Multifamily Executive News Service reports that Apartment REITs seem to be faring well, according to a recent study from Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services. Things might not look as good as 2006 and 2007, but they still aren’t bad, according to George Skoufis, S&P’s […]

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Bargain Hunters Circle European CMBS

April 21, 2008

LONDON (Reuters) – Banks and opportunity funds are hunting for bargains among cut-price European Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities (CMBS), raising hopes the debt market deep-freeze may be about to thaw. Growing appetite for European CMBS could provide a breakthrough for banks desperate to free up loan book capacity by issuing new CMBS, which many see as […]

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High Yield Mortgage REITs: The Perfect Storm?

April 17, 2008

Volume of Maturing Mortgages to be Low in 2008 and 2009, Reducing Refinance Risk Even Further, but Mark to Market is Discounting REITs to the Depths of Atlantis. After a couple of alarming headlines in Seeking Alpha related to commercial real estate, the most recent of which was “Commercial Real Estate Collapsing”, REIT Wrecks decided […]

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Dividends Under The Bridge? Markit Responds to CMSA

April 14, 2008

In responding to the Commercial Mortgage Securities Association’s (“CMSA”) letter regarding increased transparency on CMBX trading, the Markit Group (the administrator of the CMBX indices) has apparently responded with a modern-day version of “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.” Evidently, Markit is contending that since the CMBX trades on the OTC derivatives market, […]

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Bloomberg: PIMCO Big Buyer of Mortgages

April 10, 2008

Several days ago, I posted that Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack likes mortgages. However, Bill Gross and his PIMCO Total Return Fund are definitely putting their money where his mouth is. According to Bloomberg, the $125 billion fund increased mortgage debt holdings to the highest level since 2000. Bloomberg says the fund had 59% of […]

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Risk Rising on Alesco’s REIT Status

April 9, 2008

CDOs are back in the headlines – again. The old story is that they are defaulting in record numbers. If you bought CDOs in 2006, you might as well have been buying penny stocks. Indeed, few now seem to be generating any income for anyone, except for the lawyers that are now starting to unwind […]

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Morgan Stanley’s CEO Likes Mortgages

April 8, 2008

The media sentiment on the credit crisis looks like it’s starting to turn from a dour play by play to furtive attempts at calling a bottom. In an earlier article, I wrote that the “rescue” of Bear Stearns may have been the last shoe to drop, because it signaled the Fed’s determination not to let […]

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How Markit Turned Mr. Market Into Mr. Magoo

April 8, 2008

In order to understand the answer to this question, it helps to first ask another: How could a Commercial Mortgage REIT, with absolutely no credit losses and no non-performing assets across its entire $7.4 billion portfolio, be forced to take a $180 million loss? Part of the answer lies in an earlier post I wrote […]

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OT: Time out for RSS

April 5, 2008

As the Dear Leader might say, investing in REIT stocks is tough enough, never mind having to keep up to with all those internets out there. Thankfully, those crafty internets have come to the rescue with a handy tool called RSS (Really Simple Syndication). Best of all: it’s free, and that’s cheaper than a 17% […]

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