Senate moves transparency front and center

This week the U.S. Senate released its version of financial reform with a bill titled “Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010.” Like the House bill passed last year, this bill, among other things, stresses the importance of transparency. In fact, the first line of the Senate Bill says it purpose is “To promote the […]

MISMO focus for 2010

We had our monthly MISMO status call yesterday and started implementing our 2010 strategic plan. The group is focused on pushing the adoption of the rent roll and operating standards to help achieve transparency and mitigate risk. We all feel this is a “make or break” year for MISMO, so we want to give a […]

Whistler!

I spent the weekend skiing with a group of industry guys. Our annual trip is usually in Aspen, but this year we ventured to Whistler. It’s a boys trip with a rocking crew that works in lending, advisory, servicing and legal. Not much discussion about standards, rent rolls and MISMO, but I got a few […]

MBA in Las Vegas

I attended the Mortgage Bankers Association annual commercial real estate finance conference in Las Vegas last week. Attendance was about 2,000 people, which was better than last year’s 1,600 but well off the 5,000 who attended during the peak. Money Available The mood was better than last year but still pretty bleak. I would describe […]

Transparency: On the agenda

The CMSA conference in Washington, DC just ended and the transparency issue was one of (if not the) dominant issues of the conference. Many attendees — as well as the guest speakers that included a senator, two congressmen, the head of the FDIC and a treasury spokesman — stressed transparency as critical to market recovery […]

Press coverage of MISMO rent roll and operating statements standards

The commercial real estate news service CRE News picked up the MISMO press release and wrote an article about the new rent roll and operating statement standard. Hopefully, this will help broaden the debate and discussion about this issue at the CMSA conference in Washington DC next week. Here is the article:

Standards Released!

The rent roll and operating statements standards we’ve been working on for the past six months are finished. They are posted on MISMO’s Commercial Mortgage Specifications page. Now it’s time to promote the benefits of compliance to ensure widespread industry adoption. I will be at the CMSA Conference next week in Washington, DC and the MBA […]

Standards Update

The MISMO rent roll and operating statement committee which I co-chair finished its work on the XML schema today (thanks to all committee members!). The schema we propose is capable of handling all common data templates for both Rent Rolls and Operating Statements. The schema will be made public around the first of the year […]

Thanksgiving 2009

I spent Thanksgiving in New York City this year with my family. My kids had never been to NYC so we sampled some of the great things The City has to offer including the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, the museums and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. A week like that certainly makes […]

Backshop user conference and Metallica show

I am just back from our 2009 Backshop user conference in New York. Bank of America hosted it in a beautiful board room overlooking Bryant Park. About 10 clients invested the day with us to go over our accomplishments from last year and help set priorities for next year. Backshop User Conference We unveiled our […]