Much ado is being made about the Obama's Administration's proposal to overhaul the financial sector. To be sure, for the commercial real estate industry there is much to fret about - and hope for. So far, industry representatives are getting what they have lobbied for. CMSA, for instance, was delighted that the House version of the bill grants regulators the flexibility to allow a third-party investor - namely a B-piece buyer -- to satisfy the legislation's new retention requirements. 1031 exchange companies, for their part, are happy to see that that same bill has carved out regulatory oversight for their piece of the industry under this new agency.All of this is important, but at the same time, new regulations in other quarters of Washington are quietly being redone or formed. The American Council of Life Insurers, for example, has been considering new capital guidelines for mortgages that insurers directly provide for commercial buildings, according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal. The rules would call for establishing risk profiles of the individual mortgages rather than benchmarking insurers' mortgages to an industry average.Life insurance companies, never the most transparent about their investment allocations, are nevertheless showing signs of investing more in commercial real estate this year. How these rules, if implemented, will impact that remains to be seen.
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