Secondary Market

Hotel asset managers are emerging as the new breed of experienced hotel receivers, according to Capital Hotel Management (CHM), a hotel asset management and investment advisory firm based in Beverly, Massachusetts. As the lending community looks for qualified receivers, the company said it expects to see an exponential leap in demand for hotel asset management services.

A team of mortgage finance and investment management veterans have announced the official launch of a new company, BlackBox Logic LLC. BlackBoxprovides investors, broker/dealers, and researchers with a database of loan-level collateral underlying non-agency residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS).

Despite a lack of placement opportunities in 2009, foreign investors in real estate say they remain committed to the United States as their preferred real estate investment opportunity. This sentiment is underscored by a dramatic increase in the number of overseas market participants identifying the U.S. as offering the best potential for real estate capital appreciation, according to the Association of Foreign Investors in Real Estate.

In an announcement Thursday, The Alter Group, a corporate real estate developer based in Chicago, said it has formed Alter Asset Recovery, which will provide expedited solutions for lenders and special servicers holding distressed properties. The formation of this new affiliate comes at a time when distressed commercial real estate assets are potentially the largest challenge facing banks and other lenders.

For months, analysts and industry experts have assured the markets that the downturn in the commercial real estate (CRE) sector won't be enough to send the financial system into a second crisis - that it won't be the dreaded next shoe to drop because exposure is isolated to smaller, community banks. But FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair says that's not an accurate assessment.

Moody's Analytics, the risk management and research arm of New York-based Moody's Corporation, said Wednesday that it has acquired full ownership ofCommercial Mortgage Metrics (CMM) from CBRE Econometrics Advisors. CCM is an analytical model for assessing default and recovery risk for commercial real estate (CRE).

Capmark Investments, a unit of bankrupt commercial real estate lender Capmark Financial has itself filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The move is expected to help facilitate a sale of Capmark Investment's management contracts and interests in real estate equity funds, for which it has already found a buyer.

Investment manager BlackRock, Inc. said Tuesday that it has acquired substantially all of the assets of Charlotte, North Carolina-based Helix Financial Group, a boutique commercial real estate firm that offers advisory and asset valuation services to lenders and investors.

Few borrowers are asking lenders for adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) these days, what with all the bad publicity paid to ARM resets in the face of soaring foreclosures and borrowing costs for fixed mortgages now sitting at record lows. An annual report on the ARM market published by Freddie Mac Tuesday shows adjustable-rate mortgages accounted for just 3 percent of all conventional home purchase loans in 2009. That's the smallest piece of the pie for ARMs since at least 1982. At that time, they made up 62 percent of all new mortgages.

Ambac Assurance Corp., a business unit of bond insurer Ambac Financial Group Inc., has sued Credit Suisse Securities and its affiliate DLJ Mortgage Capital over mortgage-backed securities (MBS) Ambac insured in 2007. Ambac alleges the two investment companies hid information about the borrowers' ability to repay their loans, resulting in high default claims.