Moody's Sees Rating Improvements

Both commercial and residential mortgage securities saw more upgrades than downgrades from Moody's Investors Service last year, rating agency officials have told MortgageWire.In 2003, the downgrade rate for commercial mortgage-backed securities transactions fell to 4.3%, from 5.3% in 2002. The upgrade rate for CMBS rose from 2.4% to 5.1%. In the residential MBS sector, the upgrade rate rose to 5.1% in 2003 from 1.7% in 2002, while the downgrade rate increased slightly to 0.5% from 0.1%. Moody's analysts said "de-leveraging" that resulted from refinancing activity contributed to the improvement. The rating agency can be found online at http://www.moodys.com.