CMBS 2.0   :  By Jim Flaherty, President & CEO of CMBS.com

Last week’s MBA CREF conference was more subdued than January’s CMBS-centric CREFC conference. While the mood was cautiously optimistic — and definitely better than last year — the MBA CREF conference lacked the jubilation expressed at CREFC.

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I attended the annual CREFC CMBS Investor conference in Washington DC last week, where the mood was definitely upbeat. So positive, in fact, that some people were already warning about slipping underwriting standards!

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I was re-elected to the Commercial Board of Governors of MISMO for another two-year term, so I will remain active in MISMO at least through 2013. MISMO, which stands for the Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organizations (www.mismo.org), is a standard-making body run by MERS and owned by the MBA.

I have been active in MISMO because I believe commercial real estate deals should have a standard XML data set that is comprehensive enough to understand and value the deal.

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I expected the SEC to release the final Reg AB language before the end of the year, but that did not happen. So, for a final post of the year, I thought I’d highlight steps the industry has taken on its own to improve transparency and investor protections, as well as define CMBS 2.0.

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I attended a CREFC mini-conference in New York this week titled “2010 Market Initiatives: Overview and Updates.”

The half-day session provided an update on financial regulatory reform and CREFC’s efforts to improve transparency outside SEC directives by creating industry consensus.

Some of the results are good, some are not good.

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