Last month marked the first new issuance of commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) since mid-2008, when Developers Diversified Realty Corp. tapped the Federal Reserve’s Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) to sell $400 million in debt backed by 28 retail shopping centers and underwritten by Goldman Sachs.

That’s all it took to spark renewed interest in the previously stagnant secondary market for commercial real estate. Last week, Bank of America priced the second new CMBS deal – and this one traded without government backing, yet another hopeful sign for the securitization world.

BofA’s $460 million offering was backed by a single, fixed-rate loan to hedge fund manager Fortress Investment Group LLC, and secured by 44 office and industrial properties in Florida, as well as a railway corridor.

Investor demand has been strong for these initial transactions, but the Wall Street Journal explained that Bank of America’s offering was ineligible for TALF funding, and although it sold, the paper said BofA had to sweeten the deal for investors and offer better-than-expected returns.

The loan-to-value ratios of the underlying portfolio averaged 50 percent, and according to Reuters, the triple-A-rated $350 million portion of the CMBS sold at yields equivalent to a risk-free, interest rate swap benchmark plus 2.25 percentage points. Earlier, Bank of America pitched a premium of 1.9 percentage points to 2.1 percentage points, Reuters said, but wound up getting 0.15 point more.

Tony Butler, managing director of RAIT Securities, a commercial lender and broker dealer, told the Journal that the first deal to be pushed through without TALF should be labeled a success. “The deal had some challenging aspects to it, but the fact is they were able to do it,” Butler said.

Last week, DSNews.com reported that Inland Western Real Estate Trust Inc. is also readying a new-issue CMBS, which is being underwritten by JPMorgan Securities Inc., and secured by a portfolio of 55 retail properties.