BOSTON-The month of September experienced a drop in loan prices, according to data collected by DebtX. The loan sale advisors saw collateralized CMBS commercial real estate loans dip to 80.5% by September 30, 2010. The 0.5% drop from August 31, 2010 was still up in value year-over-year from 77.2%. This halts a five-month increase in prices.

"The numbers can be skewed pretty significantly by larger loans going bad. And what we had were a number of large hotel loans become distressed," Kingsley Greenland, CEO of DebtX, tells GlobeSt.com. There were 56,992 loans with a $667.5 billion aggregate principal balance representing collateral in 620 US CMBS trusts.

" Most of these loans were made before 2008, so they were made at elevated values," Greenland explains. He points out that there is a little more to it than vintage. The loans were losing value, but were also anticipated to get better and were therefore written on a pro-forma basis. As the performance declined, prices dropped even further. "Classic to what you saw just previous to the bubble," he says.