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Mortgage-Backed Securities and Pass-Throughs

Mortgage securities terms for MBS, pass-throughs, mortgage-backed certificates, and commercial MBS.

Mortgage-Backed Securities and Pass-Throughs covers MBS, CMOs, REMICs, pass-throughs, mortgage pools, TBA markets, WAC, vintage, coupons, primary-secondary spread, and secondary-market mortgage terms.

Use these pages when mortgage loans are pooled, guaranteed, traded, securitized, or analyzed from an investor perspective. It sits inside Mortgage-Backed Securities and Pools, so readers can move up when the broader property-finance context matters.

Use the table below to choose the narrower mortgage or real-estate finance branch before applying a term to a loan file, closing record, servicing review, investor report, appraisal, or valuation model. Move into the term page when the document, calculation, party role, lien position, or property cash flow matters.

What This Branch Covers

AreaUse it for
Commercial Mortgage-Backed SecurityCommercial Mortgage-Backed Security is a mortgage-backed securities concept used to evaluate cash flows, prepayment risk, and secondary-market exposure.
MBSMortgage-Backed Securities (MBS) are debt obligations packaged and sold by entities like Fannie Mae.
Mortgage-Backed CertificateA mortgage-backed certificate is a financial instrument backed by mortgages, where investors receive payments from the interest and principal on the underlying mortgages.
Mortgage-Backed SecurityMortgage-Backed Security is a mortgage-backed securities concept used to evaluate cash flows, prepayment risk, and secondary-market exposure.
Pass-ThroughsPass-Throughs is a mortgage-backed securities concept used to evaluate cash flows, prepayment risk, and secondary-market exposure.

What to Check

  • Pool, issuer, guarantor, servicer, collateral type, coupon, WAC, vintage, factor, and payment waterfall.
  • Pass-through, CMO, REMIC, TBA, agency, non-agency, or whole-loan market context.
  • Prepayment, extension, delinquency, default, servicing, and guarantee characteristics.
  • Trade date, settlement, pool number, disclosure file, and investor report.
  • Effect on yield, duration, convexity, cash-flow timing, credit risk, and liquidity.

Common Mistakes

  • Treating mortgage loans and MBS as the same exposure.
  • Ignoring prepayment and extension risk.
  • Mixing agency guarantees, private-label credit risk, and servicing rights.
  • Comparing pools without coupon, vintage, collateral, geography, and borrower characteristics.

Mortgage-securities content is educational and does not provide investment, trading, tax, legal, or securities advice.

In this section

Choose a subsection first. Deeper term pages live inside each subsection, which keeps large topic hubs readable.

Commercial Mortgage-Backed Security

Commercial Mortgage-Backed Security is a mortgage-backed securities concept used to evaluate cash flows, prepayment risk, and secondary-market exposure.

MBS

Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS) are debt obligations packaged and sold by entities like Fannie Mae.

Mortgage-Backed Certificate

A mortgage-backed certificate is a financial instrument backed by mortgages, where investors receive payments from the interest and principal on the underlying mortgages.

Mortgage-Backed Security

Mortgage-Backed Security is a mortgage-backed securities concept used to evaluate cash flows, prepayment risk, and secondary-market exposure.

Pass-Throughs

Pass-Throughs is a mortgage-backed securities concept used to evaluate cash flows, prepayment risk, and secondary-market exposure.

Revised on Sunday, June 21, 2026