Commercial Defeasance Information

Commercial Defeasance, LLC is the industry leader in the defeasance of commercial real estate loans. Founded in 2000, we have defeased loans on all property types from small, single loan defeasances to large, complex portfolio defeasances. We work with every major CMBS servicer in the United States and Canada. Our professionals guide borrowers through the defeasance process (typically 30 days) by actively managing it from start to finish, which allows borrowers, and their attorneys and brokers, to focus on the related real estate transaction with confidence the defeasance will close on time. An affiliate company, Custom Hedging Solutions, facilitates hedging transactions by applying extensive knowledge of interest rate swaps, caps, floors, swaptions and other hedging instruments to bid out interest rate caps, execute swaps, or hedge defeasance costs. WHAT IS DEFEASANCE? Nearly every fixed-rate commercial real estate loan originated since 1998 requires the borrower to defease the loan in order to sell or refinance. Put simply, defeasance is a substitution of collateral. Typically, a defeasance is coordinated to close contemporaneously with a sale or refinance. The borrower uses proceeds from the sale or refinance to purchase a portfolio of U.S. government securities that is sufficient to make all of the remaining loan payments. The securities are pledged to the lender, and the lender releases the real estate from the lien of the mortgage. The promissory note, which remains outstanding after the defeasance, and the portfolio of securities are assigned by the borrower to a successor borrower that makes ongoing debt service payments. The defeasance process involves a host of professionals, from attorneys and accountants to servicers, trustees and rating agencies. Defeasance is not a simple prepayment. The entire defeasance process typically takes 30 days, on average, of which 2 to 3 days are allocated to the closing process.