Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities (CMBS)

When you think of mortgage-backed securities (and we know that you sometimes spend whole weekends staring off into space, contemplating the intricacies of MBSs; don't worry, we do it too) you probably think of the subprime ones that sparked the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008.

These were securities...tradable financial instruments sort of like bonds...backed by bundles of home mortgages. For complicated reasons, at that time, everyone assumed that even bad mortgage risks made good securities...an assumption that proved to be about as wrong as possible.

So in the wake of the near collapse of the financial system, mortgage-backed securities in general got a bad reputation. But not all MBS are backed by subprime mortgages, or even by home mortgages as all. Commercial mortgage-backed securities are a different type.

Instead of being backed by home loans, like the more well-known versions of MBSs, a CMBS is backed by loans on commercial properties. These can be things like apartment complexes, retail stores, restaurants...basically any real estate where someone's work is built (rather than their homes).

It provides investors the opportunity to make money off of commercial properties, without the risk of putting a big chunk of capital into a single property. It provides exposure to a potentially lucrative market, while limiting the risk that any one mortgage will go into default.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What is Collateralized Mortgage...65 Views

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Finance a la shmoop what is a collateralized mortgage obligation or

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CMO all right people well this is a GMO and this is a CMO yeah it's a bunch of

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mortgages in one investment vehicle pot like mortgage Stone Soup not nearly as [Mortgage stones in a bowl of soup]

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exciting is that that man-eating plant over there

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so yeah just a bunch of mortgages that are packaged together when banks and

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investors package mortgages together well they can treat them like they're a

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big fat indexed bond fund because these groups of mortgages while they pay

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interest ie the interest comes from the people who are actually paying off their

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mortgages so why would you collateralize a mortgage obligation anyway answer risk

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by packaging lots and lots of mortgages together the theory was that well as a [CMO boxes on a conveyor belt]

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whole they would create a much less volatile environment than the former

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alternative of having tens of thousands of individual mortgages many of which at

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any given time were you know in do rest as people were dead beating and not [Man playing video games]

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paying what they promised to pay back right well collateralizing this group

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meant simply placing all of them into one investment vehicle that could be

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bought and sold as if it were in ETF or individual closed end fund but Wall

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Street being Wall Street where greed is good until it's not abused the notion of [Boxing gloves punch collateralized]

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collateralized mortgages and actually applied the notion of collateral against

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them pledging as collateral the equity in these mortgages or packages of

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mortgages and then borrowing against them so it's like leverage on leverage,

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highly volatile and this is sort of like the brilliant idea of the fraternity [Man walking along]

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social chairman sending the pledges to get graham crackers marshmallows and

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chocolate when he sees his you know couch is on fire yeah like why wouldn't [People carrying snacks and a couch on fire appears]

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he just put it out like what was he imbibing there all right well in fact

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this is more or less what happened in the mortgage meltdown of 2008 and 9 and

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it was helium inside of the couch that exploded in the form of many of these [Helium explodes on a couch]

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mortgages becoming insolvent and as one mortgage went bad

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well it caused a chain reaction of panic up and down the economic food chain

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which resulted in the near bankruptcy of the United States financial system

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basically the people who pulled together these CMOS forgot what the O stands for [Man walking along the street and plant eats him]

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oh dear, oh my

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