jpmorgan sold $484.6 million of cnp cmbs

JPMorgan Chase & Co. sold $484.6 million of bonds backed by a loan to Centro Properties Group, the Australian shopping center owner that said in July it received a loan extension on $2.3 billion in debt.

The largest top-rated portion of the bond, containing $272 million in debt maturing in 10 years, yields 165 basis points more than the benchmark swap rate, according to a person familiar with the sale who declined to be identified because terms arent public. Similar securities sold in 2006 and 2007, when property values peaked in the U.S., yesterday yielded about 2.68 percentage points more than Treasuries maturing in about the same time, according to Barclays Plc data.

Wall Street is seeking to revive the market for bonds backed by commercial property loans after issuance plummeted 95 percent to $11.2 billion in 2008 from a record $234 billion in 2007, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. JPMorgans Centro deal is the sixth sale this year. The most recent offering, also tied to a single loan, was a $660 million deal for Vornado Realty Trust last month.

Half of this years sales have been linked to properties of a single borrower. In 2007, offerings of as much as $7.6 billion contained as many as 300 loans from multiple U.S. borrowers, Bloomberg data show.

Commercial property values have tumbled 41 percent since 2007, according to the Moodys/REAL Commercial Property Price Index. Landlords are having trouble paying off existing loans amid tighter underwriting standards and lower occupancy rates for hotels, skyscrapers, apartments and warehouses.

Centros net loss for the year ended June 30 was A$652.7 million ($582.9 million) compared with a net loss of A$3.5 billion a year earlier, the Melbourne-based company said in a statement to the Australian stock exchange yesterday. The company wrote down A$487.9 million of properties, compared with A$2.7 billion last year.

The shares slipped 5.7 percent yesterday after it announced results.