Red ink doesn’t get much redder: In Westborough, a warehouse and office complex carrying an $8.75 million securitized mortgage was taken back by its lender for $6.3 million. Two months later, it sold for $3.7 million.

Investors in the securitized mortgage, owed $8 million on the property, saw just $2.5 million returned to them. The deal wasn’t a total loss, but it came close.

Across the country, deals backstopped by commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) are falling apart at an ever-quickening pace: More than $88 billion in loans are in workout talks, with $60.5 billion currently delinquent, according to data firm Realpoint.

According to Realpoint data, loan servicers liquidated $3.4 billion in CMBS debt in the first half of 2010. The average loss to CMBS investors: 40 percent.

In Massachusetts, a review of CMBS loss data reveals two important trends. Properties in the state are experiencing far lower levels of distress, overall. But when distress does hit, the losses have been staggering.

Just Holding Up

In CMBS deals, Wall Street investment banks pooled together hundreds of commercial mortgages, sliced them into bonds, and sold the bonds to investors. CMBS lending represents a fraction of the total volume of commercial real estate debt in the system, but during the boom years, CMBS underwriting loosened considerably. There’s also a larger pool of data on the health of the CMBS market, since loan servicers release public data on a monthly basis, so CMBS data is watched as an indicator of the overall health of the commercial real estate market.

Roughly 2.6 percent, or $15.7 billion, of CMBS is backstopped by commercial, properties in Massachusetts. But 2010 losses from CMBS-related loan and property liquidations in Massachusetts stood at just $16.8 million at the end of June, according to Realpoint.

Debt is considered liquidated when a property is sold in foreclosure, when a loan servicer sells the mortgage on a property to an investor, or when the servicer takes a discounted payoff from the mortgagor.

The Bay State’s share accounted for just 1.2 percent of the $1.35 billion in losses suffered by U.S. CMBS bondholders in the first half of the year.

“In general, valuation has held up better here than it has in other parts of the country,” said David Goldfisher, founder of the Henley Group, a Natick-based CMBS consultancy. “Phoenix, California and Florida are getting hammered. We have a bigger base of employment and a more diverse economy. We have older-line borrowers with stronger balance sheets who are better able withstand deeper hits, and we have supply-constrained markets.”

“Here, some deals are over-leveraged, but the real estate has intrinsic value, and people still want to get at the real estate at some number,” added Thomas Welch, a senior vice president at Boston brokerage Colliers Meredith & Grew. “In other states, the real estate isn’t worth anything. The losses are stunning. Some are complete and total losses.”

The low volume of CMBS liquidation losses in Massachusetts mirrors other metrics for local CMBS distress. According to the debt-tracking firm Trepp, at the end of June, there were 4,708 CMBS loans across the country in the hands of workout servicers, known as special servicers, with a carrying value of $88.4 billion; just 52 loans, for a total of $990 million, were backstopped by Massachusetts real estate. Nationwide, 66 percent of loans in the workout stage were nonperforming, compared to 58 percent for Massachusetts properties.

When It Rains, It Pours

On the other hand, when local CMBS loans are being liquidated, the losses closely mirror national trends. In Bay State liquidations where bondholders are suffering meaningful hits, value losses averaged 39 percent, according to Realpoint data.

The red ink includes a 26 percent loss on a Mansfield apartment complex, a 24 percent loss on a Southborough office building, a 66 percent loss on a Framingham retail property, an 83 percent loss on a Springfield hotel, and the 68 percent loss on the Westborough warehouse.

The Realpoint data also doesn’t include a number of notable CMBS-backstopped properties in various stages of foreclosure.

For instance, the Westgate Mall in Brockton, which carried a $51 million securitized mortgage, was recently sold to National Development for $31.75 million – a 38 percent decline in value.

The Hanover Mall, which carried an $87.4 million CMBS mortgage, was taken back by special servicer CW Capital at auction earlier this year. CW Capital’s bid of $36.7 million represents a 58 percent value slide, and more losses could be coming when the property is ultimately sold to a private investor.

Special servicer LNR Property Corp. suffered a 76 percent hit on paper when it foreclosed on eight properties formerly owned by KS Partners this past spring. Foreclosure deeds wiped out $26.3 million of a $34.6 million CMBS loan. LNR is believed to be trying to recoup some of that cash by improving the tenant rosters in the buildings – located in Boston, Chicopee and Billerica – before liquidating the loan.

“I wouldn’t take these losses as a justification, but they’re often cited as a reason why more loans aren’t being liquidated,” said Frank Innaurato, a managing director at Realpoint. Innaurato said losses will accelerate. “The pace is picking up dramatically. The volume of loans in liquidation is picking up, along with the volume rapidly being moved to special servicing. It’s our expectation, for the remainder of this year and into next, there will be a steady or increased pace.”

“In Massachusetts, we still have a ways to go,” Goldfisher argued. “There’s still a fair amount of pain coming. I see a lot of above-market rents having to roll over, and as they do, it will put downward pressure on [property income]. Debt coverage may be in place today, but what about in a year?”