Moody’s CMBS delinquency tracker tops 9% for first time

The rate of delinquencies within commercial mortgage-backed securities topped 9% for the first time in January although the number of delinquent loans fell for the third month in a row, according to Moody’s Investors Service. Analysts said the agency’s delinquency tracker rose 22 basis points last month to 9.01% from 8.79% in December. There are now 4,052 delinquent loans in CMBS worth $55.7 billion, according to Moody’s. For the last month of 2010, there were 4,104 delinquent loans worth about $54.9 billion. The balance of delinquent loans rose by $840 million in January, analysts said. Some 261 loans worth $4.4 billion went from current to delinquent and 343 loans valued at $3.6 billion moved back to current, or were worked out or disposed of during the month. “This is the second largest monthly amount to leave delinquency in the past year and continues the recent trend of loans leaving delinquency at a faster pace,” Moody’s said. The addition of several multistate portfolios hurt the delinquency rate in multifamily properties in January. This property type saw more than $1 billion worth of loans become delinquent last month. The amount of delinquent loans not attributable to one region doubled to $1.85 billion from $915 million in December, according to analysts. Meanwhile, the East is still the worst performing region in this property type with 19.43% delinquency rate. In the South, the rate is 14.73% and 11.11% in the West. Those three regions experienced an increase in the rate of delinquencies during January, while the rate fell 21 basis points in the Midwest to 8.04%. Write to Jason Philyaw.