NEW YORK CITY—You can make the argument that refinancing peak-era CMBS loans has something of a horse race about it. There are favorites and also-rans, handicaps and, of course, a time limit for crossing the finish line. With a number of large-scale 2005-vintage loans coming due this year, Trepp LLC has set out some of the largest as competitors in a derby.

Totaling some $12 billion in maturing loans, the 14 contenders in the research firm's first-ever Commercial Real Estate Derby each have pluses and minuses that weight the odds in their favor or against them. While acknowledging that the actual odds it assigns are unscientific and do not necessarily represent a loan's actual chances of paying off, Trepp spells out the hows and whys of each deal's prospects for success.

Among the first to reach maturity is also the highest-balance loan and one with some of the best odds for a smooth payoff: the $900-million debt on 200 Park Ave., the Tishman Speyer-owned office tower looming over Grand Central Terminal in Midtown Manhattan. “Strong financials”—including a debt service coverage ratio of 1.90x in 2014—“make this a no-brainer,” according to Trepp. Its odds of paying off: 1-5.

Those are also the odds Trepp assigns to a pair of securitized retail properties: the $710-million Houston Galleria loan and the $275.7-million CMBS debt on Oak Park Mall in Overland Park, KS, a suburb of Kansas City. Of the Galleria loan, Trepp says, “If this loan can't refinance, the entire CMBS market will be licking its wounds in 2015.”

Slightly less favorable odds—1-3, to be exact—are assigned to the $571.7-million Kindercare portfolio, the $320-million 731 Lexington Ave. in Manhattan and the $450-million Universal Hotel Portfolio loan, backed a trio of resort-area lodging properties in Orlando, FL. However, about the Kindercare loan Trepp comments that “despite mayors of some large US cities pushing for free, universal pre-K, this loan should pay off without a hitch” when it comes due in December, and notes that the other two loans are similarly safe bets.

The odds are even for a successful refi on the Woolworth Building in Lower Manhattan and the Yahoo! Center in Santa Monica, each with a balance of $250 million. In the case of the Yahoo! Center, Trepp notes that although a “fat 2.6x DSCR says this is a no-brainer,” third-largest tenant Riot Gear is leaving and Yahoo's lease expires in August.

The odds grow longer for the $315-million CMBS loan on One Court Square in the Long Island City section of Queens, NY; the Brookdale Office Portfolio, a $314.3-million loan backed by 21 smaller office properties across various states; and the $276-million balance on the Wells Fargo Center, an office tower in Denver. The latter is the first to mature with an April due date, and like the Court Square and Brookdale loans it faces odds of 3-1.

Longer odds loom for another trio of loans backed by office. They're the $306.9 million of debt on the Hyatt Center in Chicago (7-1), $380 million on the Columbia Center in Seattle (10-1) and the NGP Rubicon GSA Pool, whose $364.9-million loan balance is backed by 14 office/industrial assets in non-core markets (12-1). Of the latter, Trepp comments, “Being long GSA leases is a little like being long tobacco companies... that is, you won't have a lot of company.”