Commercial mortgage underwriters have traditionally relied upon a standard set of criteria for approving and pricing loans. The increased level of commercial mortgage loan defaults from 1% at the start of 2009 to 9.32% by the end of 2011 provides motivation for questioning underwriting standards which previously served the lending industry well. This dissertation investigates factors that affect the probability of Non-performance among commercial mortgage-backed security (CMBS) loans, proposes conditions under which the standard ratios may not apply, and tests additional criteria which may prove useful during economic periods previously not experienced by commercial mortgage underwriters. In this dissertation, Cap Rate Spread, the difference between the cap rate of a property and the Coupon Rate of the associated loan, is introduced to test whether the probability of Non-performance can be better predicted than by relying on traditional commercial mortgage underwriting criteria such as Loan to Value (LTV) and Debt Service Coverage Ratio (DSCR). Testing the research hypotheses with a probit model using a database of 47,883 U.S. CMBS loans from 1993 to 2011, Cap Rate Spread is found to have a significantly negative relationship with loan Non-performance. That is, as the Cap Rate Spread falls, the probability of Non-performance rises appreciably. A numerical model suggests that among loans which would have passed the standard ratio tests requiring loans to have values of LTV less than .8 and DSCR greater than 1.25, a Cap Rate Spread criteria requiring loans to have a value greater than 1% would have prevented the origination of an additional 1,798 CMBS loans reducing the rate of Non-performance from 14.9% with only the LTV and DSCR criteria to just 11.6% by adding the Cap Rate Spread criteria. Of course, adding additional criteria will also lead to errors of rejecting loans which would have performed well. Back testing with the same sample of CMBS loans, this Type I error rate rises from 19% with only the LTV and DSCR criteria to 34% with the addition of the Cap Rate Spread. Ultimately, CMBS loan underwriters must individually determine an acceptable level of Non-performance appropriate to their business model and tolerance for risk. Using intuition, experience, tools, and rules, each underwriter must choose a balance between the competing risks of rejecting potentially profitable loans and accepting loans which will fail. This research result is important because it helps deepen our understanding of the relationships between property income and loan performance and provides an additional tool that underwriters may employ in assessing CMBS loan risk.

According to the Reserve Bank of Australia (2006) the increased supply of Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities (CMBS), with a range of subordination, has broadened the investor base in real estate debt markets and reduced the commercial property sector’s dependence on bank financing The CMBS market has been one of the most dynamic and fastest-growing sectors in the capital markets, for a market which was virtually nonexistent prior to 1990. The global CMBS market issuance which stood at AU$5.1 billion (US$4 billion) in 1990 had grown to AU$380 billion (US$299 billion) by the end of 2006. In Australia, a total of over 60 CMBSs with nearly 180 tranches totalling over AU$17.4 billion had been issued to December 2006 from when they were first introduced in 1999. To date few studies have been done on Australian CMBSs outside the credit rating agency circles. These studies are predominantly practitioner focused (Jones Lang LaSalle 2001; Richardson 2003; Roche 2000, 2002). O’Sullivan (1998) and Simonovski (2003) are the only academic studies on CMBSs. As such, this thesis examines issues relating to the development of Australian CMBSs and quantitatively and qualitatively analyses the structuring of Australian CMBSs. In assessing the growth of the Australian CMBS market, an interpretive historical approach (Baumgarter & Hensley 2005) is adopted to provide a cogent review and explanation of features of international and Australian CMBSs. This helps to understand the changing nature of the market and provides better understanding of the present and suggests possible future directions. The Australian CMBS market is matured in comparison with the larger US and EU CMBS markets as seen by the diversity of asset classes backing the issues and transaction types, tightening spreads, and record issuance volumes. / High property market transparency (Jones Lang LaSalle 2006b) and predominance of Listed Property Trusts (LPT) as CMBS issuers (Standard & Poor’s 2005b), who legally have to report their activities and underlying collateral performance to regulatory regimes such as Australian Stock Exchange (ASX)/Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) and their equity partners, have contributed to the success of the Australian CMBS market. Furthermore, the positive commercial real estate market outlook should support future CMBS issuance, with LPTs continuing their dominance as issuers. In investigating property risk assessment in Australian CMBSs, all the CMBSs issued over a six year period of 2000 to 2005 were obtained from Standard and Poor’s presale reports as found in their Ratings Direct database to identify and review how property risk factors were addressed in all issues and within specific property asset classes following the delineation of property risk by Adair and Hutchinson (2005). Adequate assessment of property risk and its reporting is critical to the success of CMBS issues. The proposed framework shows that assessing and reporting property risk in Australian CMBSs, which are primarily backed by direct property assets, under the headings of investment quality risk, covenant strength risk, and depreciation and obsolescence risk can easily be done. The proposed framework should prove useful to rating agencies, bond issuers and institutional investors. Rating agencies can adopt a more systematic and consistent approach towards reporting of assessed property risk in CMBSs. Issuers and institutional investors can examine the perceived consistency and appropriateness of the rating assigned to a CMBS issue by providing inferences concerning property risk assessment. / The ultimate goal of structuring CMBS transactions is to obtain a high credit rating as this has an impact on the yield obtainable and the success of the issue. The credit rating process involves highly subjective assessment of both qualitative and quantitative factors of a particular company as well as pertinent industry level or market level variables (Huang et al. 2004), with the final rating assigned by a credit committee via voting (Kwon et al. 1997). As such, credit rating agencies state that researchers cannot replicate their ratings quantitatively since their ratings reflect each agency’s opinion about an issue’s potential default risk and relies heavily on a committee’s analysis of the issuer’s ability and willingness to repay its debt. However, researchers have replicated bond ratings on the premise that financial ratios contain a large amount of information about a company’s credit risk. In this study, quantitative analysis of determinants of CMBS credit ratings issued by Standard and Poor’s from 2000 – 2006 using ANNs and OR and qualitative analysis of factors considered necessary to obtain a high credit rating and pricing issues necessary for the success of an issue through mail surveys of arrangers and issuers are undertaken. Of the quantitative variables propagated by credit rating agencies as being important to CMBS rating, only loan-to-value ratio (LTV) is found to be statistically significant, with the other variables being statistically insignificant using OR. This leads to the conclusion that statistical approaches used in corporate bond rating studies have limited replication capabilities in CMBS rating and that the endogeneity arguments raise significant questions about LTV and debt service coverage ratio (DSCR) as convenient, short-cut measures of CMBS default risk. / However, ANNs do offer promising predictive results and can be used to facilitate implementation of survey-based CMBS rating systems. This should contribute to making the CMBS rating methodology become more explicit which is advantageous in that both CMBS investors and issuers are provided with greater information and faith in the investment. ANN results show that 62.0% of CMBS rating is attributable to LTV (38.2%) and DSCR (23.6%); supporting earlier studies which have listed the two as being the most important variables in CMBS rating. The other variables’ contributions are: CMBS issue size (10.1%), CMBS tenure (6.7%), geographical diversity (13.5%) and property diversity (7.9%) respectively. The methodology used to obtain these results is validated when applied to predict LPT bond ratings. Both OR and ANN produce provide robust alternatives to rating LPT bonds, with no significant differences in results between the full models of the two methods. Qualitative analysis of surveys on arrangers and issuers provides insights into structuring issues they consider necessary to obtain a high credit rating and pricing issues necessary for the success of an issue. Rating of issues was found to be the main reason why investors invest in CMBSs and provision of funds at attractive rates as the main motivation behind CMBS issuance. Furthermore, asset quality was found to be the most important factor necessary to obtain a high credit rating supporting the view by Henderson and ING Barings (1997) that assets backing securitisation are its fundamental credit strength. / In addition, analyses of the surveys reveal the following: • The choice of which debt funding option to use depends on market conditions. • Credit tranching, over-collateralisation and cross-collateralisation are the main forms of credit enhancement in use. • On average, the AAA note tranche needs to be above AU$100 million and have 60 - 85% subordination for the CMBS issue to be economically viable. • Structuring costs range between 0.1% – 1% of issue size and structuring duration ranges from 4 – 9 months. • Preferred refinancing options are further capital market issues and bank debt. • Pricing CMBSs is greatly influenced by factors in the broader capital markets. For instance, the market had literary shut down as a result of the “credit crunch” caused by the meltdown in the US sub-prime mortgage market. These findings can be useful to issuers as a guide on the cost of going to the bond market to raise capital, which can be useful in comparing with other sources of funds. The findings of this thesis address crucial research priorities of the property industry as CMBSs are seen as a major commercial real estate debt instrument. By looking at how property risk can be assessed and reported in a more systematic way, and investigating quantitative and qualitative factors considered in structuring CMBSs, investor confidence can be increased through the increased body of knowledge. Several published refereed journal articles in Appendix C further validate the stature and significance of this thesis. It is evident that the property research in this thesis can lead aid in the revitalisation of the Australian CMBS market after the “shut down” caused by the melt-down in the US sub-prime mortgage market and can also be used to set up property-backed CMBSs in emerging countries where the CMBS market is immature or non-existent.

This paper examines CMBS loans originated from 2004 to 2007 in order to find the correct model specifications for loan default during the Great Recession. The data controls for loan-to-value, debt-service coverage ratio, debt-yield, loan rate, loan spread, term lengths, loan origination year, asset class, refinance or acquisition, and demographic data of state income and sales tax rates, state education spending per pupil, education rates by MSA, unemployment rates by MSA, and median household income by zip. The study affirms existing research that LTV and debt yield are significantly correlated with default probability, found a strong relationship between loan rate, but not spread on default, affirmed industry knowledge that lodging is generally the riskiest asset class, and found that education levels in an MSA can significantly explain loan default rates. There was limited significance in regression results for unemployment rates, education spending, and median income on default probability and no evidence of default correlation with sales or income taxes. The study also provides evidence that during economic bubbles with skewed assets valuations, debt-yield becomes a more useful metric compared to LTV.

Nowadays, the skyrocket price of residential house due to lack of houses in cities becomes a crucial problem in China. The development of commercial real estate industry is not only an emerging real estate industry, but also plays a mediating role in solving the problem of lack of houses and high-price to some extent, as a mature commercial real estate market in the city gives birth to a core business centre in the downtown and many sub-business areas in different districts in the city. It is able to create jobs in different areas and to spread the population more averagely. Instead of gathering everybody in the centre, it is going to solve the problem of imbalance of supply and demand for houses and the high price in some areas, which is especially important for the big cities in China like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. This thesis is going to explore some new financing options for the small and medium-sized commercial real estate developers and provide some suggestions accordingly. Financing options like REITs, real estate fund, CBMS and mezzanine financing are discussed. In addition, taking Guangzhou, one of the first-tier cities in China, as a case study we have gained a further understanding of the real financing problems in commercial real estate. Some suggestions on the financing options of small and medium commercial real estate developers are proposed according to the academic and practical experiences.

Commercial mortgage-backed securitisation (CMBS) is an important development in the South African property finance field. This study explains the characteristics; structure and structuring; advantages, disadvantages and risks; and legal and regulatory aspects of CMBS. Four CMBS programmes have been launched in South Africa to date (August 2006) all of which have been originated by listed Property Loan Stock (PLS) companies. The unique features of the four programmes were examined and the impact on their originators and the listed property sector was analysed. The main participants in the South African CMBS industry were interviewed. CMBS has acted as a catalyst for greater competition between banks resulting in lower interest rates on bank debt and the creation of new property financing products. The introduction of CMBS has benefited not only the four originating PLS companies, but also had a positive impact on the entire listed property sector. / Business Management / M. Com. (Business Management)

Commercial mortgage-backed securitisation (CMBS) is an important development in the South African property finance field. This study explains the characteristics; structure and structuring; advantages, disadvantages and risks; and legal and regulatory aspects of CMBS. Four CMBS programmes have been launched in South Africa to date (August 2006) all of which have been originated by listed Property Loan Stock (PLS) companies. The unique features of the four programmes were examined and the impact on their originators and the listed property sector was analysed. The main participants in the South African CMBS industry were interviewed. CMBS has acted as a catalyst for greater competition between banks resulting in lower interest rates on bank debt and the creation of new property financing products. The introduction of CMBS has benefited not only the four originating PLS companies, but also had a positive impact on the entire listed property sector. / Business Management / M. Com. (Business Management)