More than $1.3 billion in commercial mortgage-backed securities conduit loans were resolved with losses in July, commercial real estate analytics firm Trepp said Monday. Overall, 175 conduit CMBS loans were liquidated this past month, down from 197 liquidations in June when $1.8 billion in CMBS conduit loans were resolved with losses. In July, the liquidation of conduit CMBS loans resulted in $538 million in losses, with a loss severity rate of 40.2%, down from a rate of 46.4% a month earlier and slightly below the average monthly rate of 41.8%. Meanwhile, defaults on loans in fixed-rate, commercial mortgage-backed securities continued to grow, with the default rate hitting 12.9% at the end of the second quarter, up 228 basis points from Dec. 31, Fitch Ratings said. For the first seven months of the year, Fitch rated $9.95 billion of new fixed-rate, conduit CMBS. But that level was unable to stabilize the cumulative CMBS default rate, according to Fitch’s Managing Director Mary MacNeill. “Highly leveraged loans from recent vintage CMBS are also still defaulting at an elevated rate,” MacNeill said in a report released last month. Write to Kerri Panchuk.