NEW YORK CITY-In a variation on the old adage that it’s darkest just before dawn, US CMBS delinquencies have climbed to a new record level, say Fitch Ratings and Trepp. However, both firms also say there are signs that late-pays are close to peaking.

“Though the pace of monthly defaults remains elevated, US CMBS delinquencies may be showing preliminary signs of stabilization,” Fitch managing director Mary MacNeill says in a release. “A projected spike of new issuance will help to offset paydown and liquidations in 2011.”

Adds Manus Clancy, managing director at Trepp, in a release, “The faith that investors have shown in the legacy US CMBS market over the last few months was validated in February as the overall delinquency rate had one of its smallest increases in nearly two years.” Trepp put the CMBS delinquency rate at 9.39% at the end of February, an increase of just five basis points over the preceding month.

Among the Fitch-rated CMBS universe, 2,959 loans totaling $36.5 billion are delinquent by 60 days or more, or 8.76% of the total. The previous high point was 8.66% in September 2010.

Trepp says multifamily and lodging remained the worst performing sectors, with delinquency rates of 16.6% percent and 14.61%, respectively. Both sectors improved in February, with multifamily delinquencies improving by 24 bps and lodging by 47 bps, according to Trepp.

Fitch also rates these two sectors as the worst for delinquencies, and notes improvements in all of the major food groups except for industrial, where the default of a $250-million pari passu note on the Bush Terminal in New York City pushed the sector’s delinquency rate upward from 8.53% to 9.40%. Trepp, however, recorded increases in delinquencies for industrial (up 32 bps to 10.44%), office (up 22 bps to 7.1%) and retail (up nine bps to 7.81%.)

New issues are being added to the Fitch-rated universe these days; February marked only the second time in 32 months that the agency has enlarged its CMBS ratings portfolio. February’s delinquency rate would have been 10 bps higher without these new issues, and as Standard & Poor’s noted in a recent report, the latest CMBS issuances run larger than their counterparts of a year ago.

“Late-2009 transactions were largely single-borrower deals with simple structures and relatively small issuance amounts, whereas the three transactions that priced in February 2011 have 10 or more classes and had opening balances of more than $1.2 billion,” according to S&P. At the same time, repayments, liquidations and scheduled amortization have contributed 150 bps of the Fitch delinquency index’s current total by shrinking the CMBS pool by some $90 billion.

In a separate report, Trepp said that commercial real estate loans accounted for 72% of the balance of nonperforming loans at the 12 banks that failed during February. Construction loans comprised 37% of the total at $119 million, while commercial mortgages contributed $111 million of the total nonperforming pool. Trepp predicts that the number of failed banks this year will be smaller than the 157 that the FDIC seized last year, but adds that the cycle of bank closings will continue at least into 2012.