How to find your CMBS loan in the SEC's ABS-EE filings
If your loan is in a public CMBS trust, the trust files its balance, rate, payment status and your property’s latest income with the SEC every month. Anyone can read it. The fastest way is to look the property up on cmbs.news, where each loan page links straight to the filing. If you want to go to the source yourself, here is how.
1. Find the trust’s name
Your loan documents or your servicer’s statements name the trust, something like “BANK 2019-BNK19” or “Benchmark 2020-B18 Mortgage Trust”. The name has three parts: the shelf (BANK, Benchmark, BBCMS, Wells Fargo Commercial Mortgage Trust), the year it closed, and a series. If you only know your servicer, the loan’s page here shows every trust that holds a piece of it.
2. Open the trust on EDGAR
Search the trust name in EDGAR’s company search at sec.gov. Each trust has its own CIK number. Its filing list shows a pair of filings every month: a 10-D (the distribution report) and an ABS-EE.
3. Open Exhibit 102
The ABS-EE carries two XML files. Exhibit 102 is the asset data: one block per loan, with a property block inside it for each building. Exhibit 103 holds the filer’s notes about that data. The format is Schedule AL under Regulation AB, and the field names are long but literal.
The ones that matter most to a borrower:
| Field | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| reportPeriodEndActualBalanceAmount | What the trust says you owe on its piece |
| paymentStatusLoanCode | 0 is current; 1, 2 and 3 are 30, 60 and 90+ days late; 4 and 5 are past maturity, paying and not paying |
| mostRecentSpecialServicerTransferDate | When the loan last moved to the special servicer |
| mostRecentDebtServiceCoverageNetOperatingIncomePercentage | Coverage on your latest reported NOI. Despite the name, it is a ratio like 1.35 |
| maturityDate, prepaymentLockOutEndDate, yieldMaintenanceEndDate | The dates that decide when and how cheaply you can pay off |
4. Check the other trusts
A big loan is usually split into notes held by several trusts, each filing its own record. Add up the balances to get the part of the loan in public deals. Some pieces may sit in private deals that file nothing.
What the filing will not show
No watchlist: Schedule AL has no field for one. No servicer comments either. Those live in the CREFC reports that trustees post on their own investor sites, which usually need a login. And the income figures are only as fresh as the last statement you sent the servicer, often a year old.
If the numbers in the filing look wrong, tell your servicer. The trust can only file what the servicer reports.