A pooling and servicing agreement (PSA), is a contract that is required when loans, including CMBS loans, are pooled together and packaged into mortgage backed securities. For CMBS loan borrowers, this means that they must abide by both the terms of the loan agreement, and by the terms of their loan’s pooling and servicing agreement.
A real estate investment trust (REIT) is a firm that acquires, owns, and operates income-producing commercial real estate, or, in the case of mortgage REITs, commercial mortgages. REITs may be either publicly traded or non-traded, private REITs, depending on the individual company. CMBS loans and REITs have a complex relationship; on one hand, traditional REITs use CMBS loans to finance their property investments, while certain mortgage REITs originate or purchase commercial loans in order to generate profits for investors.
An exchange-traded fund (ETF) is a fund comprised of securities that is regularly traded on major stock exchanges. CMBS ETFs are exchange-traded funds composed of commercial mortgage backed securities (CMBS). A commercial mortgage backed security generally consists of a pool of loans issued to income-producing commercial properties, such as apartment buildings, shopping centers, and hotels, that is placed in a trust, securitized, and sold to investors on the secondary market. Right now, the concept of CMBS ETFs is relatively new, so only one CMBS ETF is currently being actively traded, the iShares CMBS ETF.
A pooling and servicing agreement (PSA), is a contract that is required when loans, including CMBS loans, are pooled together and packaged into mortgage backed securities. For CMBS loan borrowers, this means that they must abide by both the terms of the loan agreement, and by the terms of their loan’s pooling and servicing agreement.
While CMBS lenders’ underwriting standards are stricter than they once were, a certain amount of conduit loan borrowers still default on their loans. It’s generally understood that a loan default is something that borrowers want to avoid at all costs. However, understanding the CMBS default rates-- and, just as importantly, the reason why borrowers defaulted on their loans in the first place, can be essential for borrowers who want to avoid the same fate.
While many conduit loans require that borrowers engage in defeasance if they want to prepay their loan, some lenders permit borrowers to prepay using yield maintenance. Yield maintenance involves a borrower paying off the balance of their CMBS loan, plus an additional 1-3% fee in order to compensate the lender for the income they’ve lost as a result of loan prepayment.
Borrowers often consider conduit loans’ strict prepayment penalties to be one of their major downsides. Many CMBS loans must be prepaid in a process called defeasance, which involves a borrower purchasing alternative securities, often U.S. Treasury bonds, to replace the collateral and interest income that the lender will lose as a result of prepayment. Defeasance can be a complicated process, the details of which will typically be spelled out in a borrower’s loan agreement.
If you take out a CMBS loan, and you want to pay off the loan early, perhaps because you’re selling the property, you’ll usually have to pay a prepayment penalty. Prepayment penalties are designed to compensate the lender, or, in the case of CMBS loans, the investors, for the loss of income that will result from a borrower paying off their loan early.
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