A deal expected to surface as early as this year could mark the return of the commercial real estate collateralized debt obligation (CDO) market, Reuters reported.

CDOs, which provide more structural flexibility than commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) for loan aggregators, would also offer a larger yield for investors, according to securitization industry insiders.

Rating agencies, which have already begun taking pitches for new deals, expect the first CDO will be backed with unsecuritized loans.

“We have had inquiries for commercial real estate CDOs sooner than we would have expected,” said Huxley Somerville, head of U.S. CMBS at Fitch Ratings, last month. “It’s very much in the early stages. I’m not sure a B-loan deal would happen, as it would not get the best execution required. But we’ve heard pitches for a CDO of whole loans.”

Unlike the loan participations, mezzanine loans or other high-yield debt that led to toxic CDOs – crippling the commercial real estate market at the onset of the recession – these new transactions are expected to be conservatively underwritten and backed by a static asset pool.

The last CDO completed in the United States was in 2008.