As demand for distressed U.S. commercial assets crescendos, UBS is shopping a pool of failing commercial mortgages with a face value of $1.5 billion, Bloomberg News reported. Bids for the portfolio are due Wednesday. [more]

Deutsche Bank, UBS and JPMorgan Chase are preparing the year’s first bond sales tied to commercial property loans, sources told Bloomberg News. Deutsche Bank and UBS are partnering to issue as much as $2.5 billion in commercial mortgage-backed securities linked to loans on office buildings, shopping malls and hotels in what would be the largest offering of its kind since the market froze in June 2008. JPMorgan plans to sell $1.5 billion in similar debt. “CMBS new issue still offers attractive returns relative to other fixed-income products,” said Andrew Solomon, a managing director at Angelo Gordon. “Even with new issuance picking up steam, the net supply of CMBS is still shrinking while demand is increasing. I’m pretty sure that means spreads are going to continue tightening.” Both the Deutsche Bank and UBS transaction and the JPMorgan offering are slated for next month. [Bloomberg]

Although the most recent Standard & Poor’s data from the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices shows home prices starting to improve, there is still hesitation among investors about purchasing stock in home builder companies. “Home builder stocks are still about 10 to 15 percent overvalued,” David Goldberg, a UBS home builder analyst, said on MSNBC. If stocks drop, home prices appreciate more and unemployment numbers drop, Goldberg said, there will be more interest in purchasing home builder stocks. He recommended Toll Brothers as a good option for investing once its prices drop. “Toll has a great balance, market share gains, real liquidity restraints, and a very conservative market team,” Goldberg, said.

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UBS Financial Services has renewed its $7.5 million, five-year lease for 34,536 square feet at Miami’s Bank of America Tower. The renewal is the tower’s sixth so far in 2009 and the largest of the year. Tony Puente, senior vice president of Fairchild Partners, represented the landlord, Wealth Capital Management. Colleen B. Newcomer, president of CBN Commercial Real Estate Services, represented UBS Financial Services. Bank of America Tower is now 92 percent occupied. TRD [more]