The Federal Reserve may be close to doing its first deal using an emergency credit facility to aid the sale of commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS), the Wall Street Journal reported.

The Fed decided in June to extend its Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF), designed to help jump start securitization markets, to CMBS, but has been cautious about actually deploying the central bank credit to help investors purchase the securities amid concerns about the commercial real estate sector.

One of the problems, the Journal said, is that all of the issues put forward for the facility involve a single borrower, which the Fed perceives as a riskier proposition than a security backed by loans to several different borrowers.

But the Fed is close to completing due diligence on an issue prepared by Goldman Sachs for a $400 million loan it made to Developers Diversified Realty Corp., a major owner of shopping centers, the Journal reported.

“The Fed is being very conservative, very diligent in reviewing collateral and very risk-averse,” Frank Innaurato, managing director at Realpoint LLC, a credit-ratings firm, told the Journal.

Under TALF, investors can borrow as much as 95 percent of the bonds’ value by pledging the securities as collateral, so that taxpayers take most of the risk if there is a default.

Since its introduction in March, TALF has been viewed as a moderate success, the Journal said, helping borrowers from auto companies and credit card issuers raise capital. The Fed has so far made about $40 billion in TALF loans to investors buying these securities, helping to reduce the cost of borrowing in these markets.

While the Fed has indicated concerns about single-borrower issues, banks remain reluctant to take on “warehouse” risks from having to pool together loans from many borrowers, the Journal said. Other CMBS deals in the pipeline include two managed by JP Morgan Chase for Inland Western Retail Real Estate Trust and Vornado Realty Trust.

“We need a transaction approved to reconnect the market,” Jeffrey DeBoer, CEO of the lobby group Real Estate Roundtable, told the Journal.

The Developers Diversified deal reflects the high threshold the Fed is setting for loans to be eligible for TALF financing, the Journal said.

The $400 million loan is secured by shopping centers occupied by discount retailers, which maintain a stable cash flow even in a recession. The loan amount represents only about half of the value of the underlying properties, compared with loans equal to 70 percent of a property’s value that were common before the crisis.

The tight restrictions bar thousands of small developers and commercial-property owners with heavy debt loads from participating. Floating-rate mortgages, construction loans or loans secured by properties that don’t have a stabilized cash flow are among those that can’t qualify.