Investors in commercial real estate could be forgiven for thinking they have found themselves on the set of The Big Short. In particular, that scene with Ryan Gosling with a Jenga tower as he explained how mortgage-backed bonds had changed — turned into a private game of three-card monte.

Things are changing now. In May came the news that investors in the AAA tranche of the $308 million debt backed by 1740 Broadway in midtown Manhattan only got 74% of their investment back after the loan sold at a steep discount. That was the safe tranche. Creditors in the five lower groups were wiped out.

Now, the Wall Street Journal reported that another part of the CRE-backed bond market is seeing more defaults than was ever supposed to. The single-asset, single-borrower (SASB) bond market — an estimated $260 billion worth — is feeling the tremors. The loans backed the purchase of major office and retail assets. The investors are institutional investors like pension funds, insurers, and banks.