Office Special Servicing Hits a New High as More Loans Transfer Before Default

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September 24, 2026

Office distress reaches new highs. The office CMBS delinquency rate reached 13.2% in August 2026, the highest reading since at least 2019 and up from 8.1% in July 2024. That is roughly 1.6 times the 8.2% rate across all property types. The figure includes performing matured loans; excluding them, office delinquency stands at 9.8%. The special servicing rate climbed to 15.7%, also the highest since at least 2019, up from 14.9% a year earlier and 10.6% in July 2024. The figures cover $189.6 billion of office debt across conduit, single-asset single-borrower and CRE CLO deals.

The climb slowed, then resumed. Most of the increase came between mid-2024 and mid-2025. From September 2025 through July 2026, office delinquency held between 11.5% and 12.5% before jumping in August. Of the deals that have reported so far in September, delinquency is running above 14% and special servicing above 16%. Conduit office remains the weakest segment at 14.4% delinquent and 18.5% in special servicing, compared with 10.7% and 11.5% for single-asset single-borrower office. Maturity remains the main driver: 71% of distressed office balance is tied to a failed or imminent refinancing rather than missed payments.

Distress is arriving earlier. Over the past 12 months, 51% of office loans transferred to special servicing were still current at transfer, a median of about 11 months ahead of maturity, up from 42% in the prior 12 months. Borrowers and master servicers are increasingly moving loans before a payment is missed or a balloon date passes. One SoHo Square, backed by roughly $469 million of CMBS notes, transferred in late August while current, nearly two years before its 2028 maturity.

The writing was on the wall. Whether that is premature shows up in what happened next. CRED iQ tracked the 93 office loans that transferred while current and ahead of maturity between August 2024 and August 2025. Through August 2026, 72% went 60 or more days delinquent or matured without paying off at some point. As of August, 43% were still delinquent or matured unpaid, and only 15% had returned to the master servicer and were current. Among loans already delinquent at transfer, the share that reached serious delinquency was 92%. A loan that looks healthy at transfer has proven only modestly safer than one that has already stopped paying.

Full buildings are not immune. Several failed refinancings involve fully leased, single-tenant properties. Crossroads III in Sunnyvale, a $209 million loan on a 100% leased property with Apple as its largest tenant, was extended once, went to special servicing in August and received a notice of default on September 1. In Rockville, Maryland, the $138 million GSK R&D Centre loan transferred ahead of its 2027 maturity as its sole tenant vacated, even though the property still reports full occupancy.

Large loans are the exception. Among current-at-transfer loans under $100 million, 74% went on to default at some point, and 11% were back with the master servicer by August. Among loans of $100 million or more, the default rate was lower at 63%, and about a third had returned to the master servicer by August, some after a period of default. Willis Tower and 1211 Avenue of the Americas both transferred while current and have since returned to the master servicer. For larger loans, an early transfer appears to work more as an entry point to a restructuring than as a precursor to foreclosure.

Why no one is waiting. The 2015 and 2016 vintages explain the caution. Ten-year office loans from those years paid off at maturity at 47% and 44% by balance, compared with 79% and 76% for other property types. Distress in the 2016 office vintage jumped 35 percentage points in a year to 51% of balance. In downtown Indianapolis, Salesforce Tower and PNC Center, both originated on the same day in August 2016, matured on the same day, September 1. PNC Center went to special servicing days earlier and is now non-performing matured; Salesforce Tower is performing matured.

What comes next. About $39 billion of office CMBS matures over the next 12 months. Of that, $13.9 billion is not yet distressed but already shows warning signs: debt service coverage below 1.25x, occupancy down 10 or more points from securitization, or a recent watchlist addition. The largest include 3 Bryant Park ($1.13 billion, watchlisted in May) and 280 Park Avenue ($1.08 billion, debt service coverage of 0.72x). If the past two years are a guide, many of these loans will reach special servicing well before they miss a payment.

Data reflects CRED iQ’s coverage of conduit, single-asset single-borrower and CRE CLO office loans as of August 2026 remittances. Delinquency includes performing matured loans. Outcomes for loans that left reporting are inferred from their last reported status. Initial maturity dates on floating-rate loans with extension options may overstate near-term maturities.

About CRED iQ

CRED iQ is a commercial real estate data and analytics platform providing loan-level insight across CMBS, agency and private-label CRE loan portfolios, helping lenders, investors and servicers monitor performance, valuation and risk.

CRED iQ Launches PRISM: Unit-Level Multifamily Rent Analytics

By

Liam Mulcahy

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September 22, 2026

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New API-first product structures asking rents, floor plans, square footage, bedrooms, bathrooms, and amenities for over one million multifamily properties, refreshed weekly

PHILADELPHIA, PA — CRED iQ, the commercial real estate data and analytics company, today announced PRISM, a multifamily unit analytics product that turns publicly advertised rental listings into structured, property-level data. PRISM covers more than one million deduplicated multifamily properties drawn from more than 1.5 million public listings, refreshes weekly, and is delivered through a REST API, bulk data feeds, and an MCP server for AI workflows.

PRISM addresses a familiar problem for appraisers, lenders, investors, and developers: multifamily rent comparables still get assembled by hand, one listing site at a time. PRISM does that work at national scale and returns the result as clean tables keyed to a single property ID. For each property, subscribers receive public asking rents by unit type, from studios through four-bedroom units, with minimum, maximum, and midpoint values; floor plans with bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage, and unit counts; availability and lease terms as published; structured amenities and ratings; and HUD enrichment including year built, total units, inspection scores, and subsidy flags. A source map records every listing that contributed to a record, so each rent can be traced back to where it was publicly advertised.

“PRISM is a benchmarking dataset. It shows what the market is asking, unit by unit, and hands it to you as an API so your appraisal, underwriting, or market study can move at the speed of your own workflow,” said Michael Haas, Chief Executive Officer of CRED iQ. “PRISM was designed around a set of principles that our clients, prospects and our own analysts believe the multifamily industry needs.”

PRISM extends CRED iQ’s existing coverage of the securitized commercial real estate market into the broader multifamily rental universe. The product is built on the same API-first architecture CRED iQ has used since 2019 to deliver loan, property, and valuation data to lenders, investors, servicers, rating agencies, and researchers.

Availability: PRISM is available now in early access. Professionals and firms can request an API trial at pages.cred-iq.com/prism. Delivery options include a REST API, scheduled bulk data feeds, and an MCP server for use with AI agents. Enterprise and data-licensing inquiries can be directed to info@cred-iq.com.

About CRED iQ

CRED iQ is the enterprise data and intelligence platform powering the securitized commercial real estate market — spanning CMBS, SASB, CRE CLO, and GSE/Agency Multifamily. Delivered via web platform, API, bulk feeds, and MCP server, CRED iQ is the data provider of choice for institutional market participants and the canonical data layer for AI-driven CRE workflows. Learn more at www.cred-iq.com.

Media Contact
CRED iQ
info@cred-iq.com

State of Conduit CMBS: Multifamily and Office Stay Levered, While Other Property Types Provide More Equity

By

Liam Mulcahy

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September 17, 2026

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The latest conduit CMBS data reveal a lending market that has grown more selective, not more cautious. Rates broadly eased over the past year, yet borrowers in most property types are being asked to bring more equity to the table than they were twelve months ago. Multifamily and office are the exceptions, for different reasons, and increasingly the exceptions that define the cycle.

Source: CRED iQ, conduit new issue data, June–August 2025 vs. June–August 2026. Figures are note-amount-weighted averages.

Multifamily is the sector where issuers extended more credit on better terms. LTV climbed to 62.0%, up 2.2 points and the highest of any property type, while the rate on those loans fell the most in the entire sample, down a full half-point to 6.0%. Debt yield actually dropped slightly, meaning borrowers are covering less cushion per dollar borrowed even as leverage rose. That is about as clean a vote of confidence as a lending market gives.

Office also gained leverage, but the mechanics look different. LTV rose 3.3 points, to 49.5%, yet DSCR fell by more than two tenths of a turn, to 1.94x, and debt yield ticked up rather than down. Issuers are willing to lend more against office collateral, but they’re pricing that leverage with thinner coverage and a smaller margin for error, a bet that office cash flows have stabilized enough to underwrite more aggressively, not a wholesale return of confidence in the sector.

Everywhere else, the ask went the other direction, and more sharply. Retail’s LTV fell 10.2 points, to 47.8%, while its debt yield jumped 8.1 points, to 20.3%, the single largest swing in the table. Self-storage and industrial told a similar story: leverage down 6 to 10 points, debt yield and DSCR both up. None of these sectors are in distress; DSCR actually improved in each case. But issuers are structuring deals that require meaningfully more sponsor equity than they did a year ago, even as the underlying cost of debt got a little cheaper.

Hotel remains the market’s most watched holdout. Its debt yield, at 22.4%, is the highest of any category by a wide margin, and it rose again this year even as rate and LTV both eased at the edges. Lenders are still pricing in more downside than the headline rate suggests.

The blended LTV held flat at 55.6% both years, but that’s an artifact of mix, not stability. Multifamily’s share of loan count rose from roughly 31% to 43%. Strip that shift out, and the underlying message is unambiguous: capital is concentrating in multifamily and, more cautiously, office, while every other property type is being asked to fund the gap themselves.

This analysis reflects CRED iQ’s proprietary conduit new issue surveillance data for the periods indicated and is provided for informational purposes only. It does not constitute investment, legal, or financial advice. Figures are subject to revision as additional deal data becomes available.

About CRED iQ

CRED iQ is a commercial real estate data and analytics platform providing loan surveillance, valuation, and risk analytics across CMBS, agency (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae), and private-label CRE loan portfolios. Our proprietary data covers conduit, single-asset/single-borrower, and CRE CLO transactions, supporting investors, servicers, and researchers with timely, granular market intelligence.

Bank Multifamily Loan Delinquencies Ease to 1.41% in Q2 2026, Why the Relief May Be Temporary

By

Liam Mulcahy

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September 11, 2026

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Bank-held multifamily loan delinquencies eased to 1.41% in Q2 2026, down from a multi-year high of 1.47% in Q1, per CRED iQ’s analysis of FDIC data across all insured institutions. Banks’ total multifamily portfolios grew to $667.6 billion in the quarter, up 3.6% year-over-year though decelerating from Q1’s pace, and the dollar amount of delinquent loans fell too, to $9.41 billion from $9.78 billion. Early-stage delinquencies (30-89 days) dropped to 0.31% from 0.40%, but 90+ day delinquencies ticked up to 1.10% from 1.07%, and net charge-offs rose to an annualized 0.32%, more than double the 0.13% banks charged off for all of 2025. That combination, easing delinquency, rising realized losses, is consistent with a workout-driven cycle rather than a resolving one. Today’s rate is still roughly 6.7 times the 2019 low of 0.21%, though well below the 5.90% Global Financial Crisis peak.

What’s Driving the Losses? A Property-Level View From CRED iQ’s Loan Data

FDIC data shows losses rising but investors need to examine property-level financials to understand the root causes. CRED iQ’s own property-level income and expense data, securitized multifamily loans that reported updated financials in June 2026, fills that gap. At the median property, effective gross income grew just 0.6% while operating expenses grew 1.5%, about 2.5 times as fast. Net operating income grew only 0.2%. That median hides a wide split: 57% of properties saw expenses outpace income, and 48% saw NOI decline outright, close to a coin flip nationally. A property with softening NOI has less cushion to absorb a rate reset or a maturity refinance, a plausible link to the same loans eventually migrating into the 90+ day bucket, or getting resolved through a workout and a realized loss.

The pattern isn’t uniform. Denver, Seattle, and San Francisco show the weakest combination of trends nationally, below-average income growth paired with above-average expense growth, producing the sharpest NOI erosion in the sample. Several Sun Belt metros, including Dallas and Austin, look different: NOI softness there comes from weak income growth rather than rising costs, a demand-side story rather than a cost-side one.

CRED iQ’s property-level dataset reflects securitized multifamily loans, distinct from FDIC’s bank-held universe.

The Bottom Line

Q2 delivered the first genuinely mixed signal in an otherwise steady multifamily credit deterioration: the headline rate improved, but 90+ day delinquencies and charge-offs kept climbing. CRED iQ’s property data suggests why the relief may not last, expenses are still outrunning income for the median property, and NOI is flat to negative for roughly half the national multifamily book. The Denver, Seattle, and San Francisco pattern is worth watching heading into Q3 in particular, since it shows income and expense pressure compounding in the same markets rather than offsetting each other. Whether Q2 marks a real inflection point or a one-quarter pause depends on how both bank call reports and property fundamentals shape up next quarter.

Sources: CRED iQ analysis of all FDIC-insured institutions, multifamily residential real estate loans, Q1 2007 through Q2 2026; CRED iQ proprietary analysis of securitized multifamily loan-level property financials, reporting periods since June 2026.

CRE CLO Distress Accelerates in August

By

Liam Mulcahy

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September 4, 2026

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The CMBS Market Remains Weighed Down by CRE CLO and SASB Loans Issued in 2021 and 2022

CRE CLO’s distress rate jumped from 19 percent in July to 28 percent in August, the sharpest one-month move of any deal type this year. SASB has held near 22 percent since June. Both trace to the same two origination years: 2021 and 2022 vintage loans now carry $3 billion of CRE CLO’s special-servicing balance and $1.7 billion of SASB’s, against $27 billion and $17 billion outstanding. In both cases the distress sits in a handful of large, identifiable deals rather than spread across the market.

The chart below puts these two deal types in context against the rest of the securitized universe. Conduit, Freddie Mac, and SFR have barely moved in eight months, each still under five percent. CRE CLO and SASB are the only categories that have crossed into double digits — a divergence specific to 2021-and-2022 vintage collateral, not the broader lending market.

Distress rate by securitization type, loans issued 2021–2022. Source: CRED iQ proprietary loan-level analytics.

CRE CLO: A Single Portfolio Is Doing Most of the Damage

FSRIA 2021-FL3 is the largest contributor, with $353 million of multifamily collateral now in special servicing across seven loans. It has added a new default roughly every eight weeks throughout 2026, and August brought two more: River Crossing at Roswell ($49 million) and Grace Abernathy Apartments in Sandy Springs, Georgia ($42 million), both tied to 2026 balloon maturities. Add the July transfer of 415 Premier Apartments in Evanston, Illinois ($40 million), and this one deal has moved $131 million into distress since spring.

ARCLO 2022-FL1, a similar Sunbelt bridge-loan CLO, added The Residences at Medical in San Antonio ($27 million) and Pebblebrook Apartments in Redlands, California ($12 million) this cycle for $210 million of newly distressed collateral in August alone. Five deals now account for 38 percent of all CRE CLO special-servicing balance, and the ten largest deals hold 58 percent. Texas, Florida, and Georgia alone carry 44 percent of the distressed balance — bridge loans underwritten on rent growth that never showed up before their floating-rate plans ran out of runway.

SASB: Four Office and Lab Portfolios Carry Two-Thirds of the Category

SASB’s distress is concentrated instead in four single-borrower office and lab deals worth 64 percent of the category’s $1.7 billion balance. BXHPP 2021-FILM, a $525 million loan against seven Hollywood studio and office properties, transferred in July. ALEN 2021-ACEN ($203 million, Three Allen Center, Houston) and LIFE 2021-BMR ($190 million, life-science space across Cambridge, San Diego, and the Bay Area) both transferred earlier this year.

The newest addition, BSREP 2021-DC, transferred August 10: a $162 million loan against eight Washington, D.C.-area office buildings. Its size has roughly offset whatever balance SASB resolved elsewhere this summer, which is why the rate hasn’t moved. California, New York, and D.C. now hold two-thirds of SASB’s distressed balance.

What It Means Going Forward

Office and mixed-use loans maturing over the next nine months are pricing 170 to 180 basis points above their in-place notes, the widest refinancing gap of any property type — the market BSREP and LIFE will resolve into. CRE CLO’s Sunbelt loans face the same wall from a different angle: floating-rate plans built on 2021 and 2022 rent growth that never materialized.

Source: CRED iQ proprietary loan-level analytics. CRE CLO and SASB loans originated 2021–2022, deduplicated to unique loans from property-level records and cross-referenced against CRED iQ’s August 2026 distressed-loan alert log. Distress = special servicing or non-performing/delinquent status, as reported through the September 3, 2026 data pull.

Property Types Feeling the August Heat

By

Liam Mulcahy

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August 27, 2026

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Industrial, hospitality, retail, and self storage post $4.6 billion in new distress

The CRED iQ distress rate bottomed at 10.11% in April and rose for three consecutive months, reaching 10.78% in July. The special servicing rate followed the same pattern, climbing from 9.73% to 10.02% over that stretch, and the delinquency rate moved from 8.08% to 8.67%. Early August figures point to a fourth straight increase across all three measures, though the month is still being finalized.

Property Type Analysis

Industrial produced the single largest distressed loan in the entire report. Project JR, a warehouse and logistics property which has been converted to a data center in Carrollton, Texas, was originally structured with extension options and the borrower exercised the first of three options in June to push out its maturity. Midland, the servicer, nonetheless initially reported the loan as Performing Matured in early August; that status was later revised to Current. Across six pari passu notes (CONE 2024-DFW1), the loan totals $687.1 million. Industrial distress overall reached $1.41 billion across 101 severe alerts this month.

Hospitality distress centered on two large, name-brand assets. The Hyatt Regency New Orleans, a $325 million loan (NOHT 2019-HNLA), transferred to special servicing on a payment default — the largest new special servicer transfer of the month across any property type. The Ritz-Carlton Sarasota, a $362.5 million loan across four notes (BAMLL 2024-BHP), is now Newly Delinquent (Performing Matured) after missing its September maturity while continuing to pay. Hospitality distress overall reached $1.17 billion across 88 severe alerts this month.

Retail distress this month clustered in regional and outlet malls, coast to coast. Augusta Mall in Georgia, a combined $155.2 million across two notes, moved to Non-Performing Matured status on a balloon payment default. Fresno Fashion Fair Mall, $140 million combined across two notes, and Harlem USA in Manhattan, $108 million combined, both transferred to special servicing on imminent maturity default. Coral Ridge Mall in Iowa ($61.7 million) and The Shoppes at South Bay in Torrance, California ($37 million) both went newly late. Grove City Premium Outlets in Pennsylvania and Gulfport Outlet Mall in Mississippi, tied to the same MSC 2015-UBS8 deal, added $64 million combined. Retail distress overall reached $951.4 million across 89 severe alerts this month.

Self storage distress traced almost entirely to two national portfolio operators. A Prime Storage portfolio securitized in BMARK 2023-V4, $57.9 million across 91 properties spanning New York, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Connecticut, Arizona, Rhode Island, and Virginia, registered as newly late in the same cycle. A separate U-Haul portfolio in CD 2017-CD6, $23.6 million across 39 properties in more than a dozen states, did the same. Together the two portfolios account for the bulk of self storage’s $124 million in distressed balance this month, in a property type generally treated as close to recession-resistant.

Market Context

A limited refinancing environment combined with elevated interest rates continues to push loans past maturity across property types, not only the office and multifamily loans that typically dominate distress coverage.

Source: CRED iQ Property Alerts, August 2026. “Distress” includes Newly Late, Newly Delinquent (all maturity statuses), Delinquency Degradation (all stages), and New Special Servicer Transfer alert categories; excludes New Watchlist Loan additions.

The Maturity Wall Is Getting Taller

By

Liam Mulcahy

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August 21, 2026

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Refinancing costs are rising sharply on the $100 billion in loans coming due over the next nine months

More than 2,600 conduit and SBLL CMBS loans, carrying a combined outstanding balance over $100 billion, mature over the next nine months. The balance-weighted distress rate across that pool is 5.55 percent — a manageable-looking average that hides which property type is really under stress, how concentrated the balance is geographically, and which loans that look fine today are headed for a far harder refinancing.

Multifamily Is Under Stress and Relief Isn’t Coming

Office carries the highest distress rate of any major property type in this maturing pool, at 9.4 percent on $23.86 billion — unsurprising. More telling: multifamily, at $5.01 billion, shows a 7.5 percent distress rate — higher than retail’s 3.5 percent and higher than hotel’s 4.4 percent. Multifamily is conventionally treated as the safer bet, especially set against retail’s long-running “death of the mall” narrative. In this pool, it’s the other way around.

Refinancing Costs Are Landing Far Harder on Some Property Types Than Others

Distress rates capture what’s already gone wrong. They don’t capture what’s coming. Across office, hotel, industrial, retail, mixed-use and multifamily debt maturing in this window, the average note rate on those loans today is 5.44 percent. Loans actually originated between May and August of this year — the real cost of replacing that debt — are pricing at a loan-weighted 6.58 percent, a gap of about 114 basis points that applies whether or not a loan is currently flagged as distressed.

Property Type	Rate on Maturing Loan	New-Origination Rate	Gap
Mixed-Use	5.04%	6.82%	+178 bps
Retail	4.77%	6.50%	+173 bps
Office	5.14%	6.86%	+172 bps
Multifamily	5.00%	5.65%	+65 bps
Industrial	5.93%	6.52%	+59 bps
Hotel	6.17%	6.50%	+32 bps

That gap isn’t uniform, and it doesn’t track with where distress is showing up today. Mixed-use and retail — two of the cleanest performers on trailing distress — face the widest resets, at +178 and +173 basis points; office is close behind at +172. Hotel, despite carrying the highest current rate of any major property type, faces the smallest gap, just +32 bps, because those loans were already priced closer to today’s market. A loan with no problems today can still walk into a materially higher payment the moment it refinances. Call it shadow distress: a risk hiding inside this wall’s currently “clean” loans that today’s distress numbers alone will never show.

A Fifth of the Entire Maturity Wall Sits in One Metro

Just 10 of the 371 metro areas in this data account for 57.8 percent of the full $87.8 billion balance. New York-Newark-Jersey City alone is $15.87 billion — 18.1 percent of the national total. Los Angeles ($7.81B) and San Francisco ($4.70B) round out the top three. The map below shows the concentration: a wall sitting hard in a handful of gateway markets, not spread evenly across the country.

CMBS Maturity Wall — balance maturing by metro

The Maturity Wall Has Many Large Bricks

A single retail property in Honolulu carries a $1.73 billion loan maturing in June 2027 — larger than the combined balance maturing in most other metros in this data. It’s almost certainly Ala Moana Center, given its scale and financing history. That’s the largest single loan in the entire maturity wall, but it isn’t the only brick this size.

A $1.69 billion office loan on Binney Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts — in the heart of the Kendall Square life-science and lab-office corridor — matures in May 2027. A $1.52 billion retail loan on Fallbrook Avenue in Los Angeles matures in March 2027. In New York, three trophy office towers on Sixth Avenue and Park Avenue alone account for well over $1.4 billion in maturing balance across three different months: 1290 Avenue of the Americas ($673 million, November 2026), 1095 Avenue of the Americas ($544 million, February 2027), and 280 Park Avenue ($430 million, September 2026).

These loans aren’t uniformly healthy, either. 280 Park Avenue is already showing real strain, while its Sixth Avenue counterparts and Ala Moana Center are considered comfortable performers today — though comfortable now is exactly the kind of loan the shadow distress problem above is about. Whatever shape each loan is in today, its outcome — refinanced smoothly, extended, or handed back — is large enough to move the numbers for its entire metro and, in some cases, for the property type nationally. A reminder that a handful of single-asset loans can swing those numbers on their own, and that the loan-level detail is where the real risk in this maturity wall actually lives.

What’s Actually Driving the Worst Pockets of Distress

January 2027’s distressed balance is spread across four office loans in four separate gateway metros — New York, Washington, Seattle, and San Francisco — all stressed in the same 30-day window. That’s not one bad loan; it’s an office-specific pattern hitting four of the country’s largest office markets at once. September 2026 tells a different story: a lodging portfolio and a Chicago office loan are fully distressed, but a $699.7 million New York office loan, only 10.4 percent distressed, still contributes more dollars just by being large — size and distress rate both doing real work.

The Takeaway

The 5.55 percent headline distress rate is a reasonable-looking average built from pieces that disagree: a national number that’s really a New York number in disguise, a property type reputation that doesn’t hold up in this cohort, and a refinancing reset hitting some property types far harder than others — one that will eventually catch today’s clean, performing loans too.

Source: CRED iQ proprietary CMBS loan-level analytics. Conduit and SBLL deal types only. Loans maturing September 1, 2026 through June 30, 2027.

To Err is Human, To Mod is Bank

By

Liam Mulcahy

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August 13, 2026

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CRE Loan Modifications: May–July 2026 Report

Summary. CRED iQ tracked 82 modified CMBS and CRE CLO loans with a combined $2.36 billion in outstanding balance from May through July 2026. The mix looks different than it did a few quarters ago: extend-and-pretend hasn’t disappeared, but it’s no longer the whole story. Forbearances and combination modifications are now carrying meaningful weight alongside straight maturity extensions, and the balance is concentrated in mid-size loans rather than mega-loans. The property type with the most modifying isn’t hotels or office anymore — it’s multifamily.

Overview of Recent Modification Activity

Of the $2.36 billion modified during the period, maturity date extensions remained the single largest category: 21 loans totaling $802.5 million, or 34.0% of modified balance (25.6% of the loan count). Forbearances followed at 15 loans and $514.0 million (21.8% of balance), while combination modifications — deals pairing an extension with other relief, such as a paydown, rate adjustment, or reserve requirement — accounted for 10 loans and $345.6 million (14.7% of balance). The remaining 36 loans, $695.4 million (29.5% of balance), fell into other or miscellaneous modification categories.

Taken together, extensions, forbearances, and combination mods — the categories most closely associated with lenders buying time on distressed collateral — made up 70.5% of modified balance this period, down from the near-universal “extend and pretend” theme of recent reports. Lenders appear to be reaching for a broader toolkit than a simple maturity push.

Modifications by Property Type

Multifamily loans led modification activity by a wide margin, a shift from the hotel- and office-driven distress of previous quarters:

Multifamily: 35 loans totaling $1.14 billion (48.4% of modified balance)
Hotel: 15 loans totaling $493.8 million (20.9%)
Retail: 6 loans totaling $236.7 million (10.0%)
Office: 17 loans totaling $226.2 million (9.6%)
Mixed Use: 5 loans totaling $160.5 million (6.8%)
Other: 3 loans totaling $67.6 million (2.9%)
Industrial: 1 loan totaling $31.2 million (1.3%)

Multifamily’s rise to the top of the modification table is notable given the sector’s reputation for relative stability earlier in the cycle. Rate resets on floating-rate loans and slower rent growth in oversupplied metros appear to be catching up with borrowers who underwrote to more favorable financing conditions. Hotel remains a source of distress, at roughly a fifth of modified balance. Office, long the poster child for CRE distress, accounted for under 10% of modified balance this period — a smaller share than either multifamily or hotel.

Modifications by Loan Size

Unlike the prior report, where loans of $100 million or more drove the bulk of modified balance, mid-size loans dominate this period:

$20M–$50M: 38 loans totaling $1.22 billion (51.7% of modified balance)
$50M–$100M: 8 loans totaling $554.3 million (23.5%)
$100M+: 2 loans totaling $280.0 million (11.9%)
$10M–$20M: 18 loans totaling $275.1 million (11.7%)
Under $10M: 16 loans totaling $28.8 million (1.2%)

Loans of $50 million and above make up 35.4% of modified balance, but the majority of activity — both by count and by dollars — now sits in the $20M–$50M range. The average modified loan balance was $28.7 million; the median was $23.1 million, reinforcing that this period’s distress is showing up in the broad middle of the market rather than in a handful of trophy-asset workouts.

Key Findings

The May–July 2026 data points to a modification landscape that’s broadening rather than concentrating. Multifamily has overtaken hotel and office as the property type generating the most modification activity, a reminder that distress rotates across sectors as financing conditions and local fundamentals shift. The loan-size distribution has also flattened: rather than a small number of massive loans accounting for most of the dollar volume, mid-size loans in the $20M–$50M band now carry the largest share of modified balance. And the modification toolkit itself looks more varied, with forbearances and combination structures closing the gap on the maturity extensions that once defined “extend and pretend.”

None of this means distress has eased — $2.36 billion in loans needed some form of relief over three months, and more than 70% of that balance came in the form of extensions, forbearances, or combination modifications built to buy borrowers’ time. But the shape of that distress has changed, and lenders and borrowers alike appear to be working from a wider set of options than a maturity date extension alone.

About CRED iQ. CRED iQ manages access to over $2.3 trillion of CRE loans and provides data analytics serving investors, lenders, and brokers in the commercial real estate sector.

Methodology note: Loan-level modification activity was aggregated from property-level servicer data by deal and loan ID. Where a single loan spans multiple properties, the loan was assigned to the property type representing the largest share of allocated balance. Loans with no usable property-level detail in the underlying data (14 loans, $582.4 million) were excluded from this report. The state map reflects property-level allocated balance rather than loan-level totals, since a single loan can span multiple states.

CRE & CMBS Distress Report: Top 50 U.S. Metro Rankings and What’s Driving Them

By

Liam Mulcahy

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August 7, 2026

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CMBS Distress Rate Rankings: Top 50 U.S. Metros — July 2026 — Top 50 U.S. metros by balance-weighted CMBS distress rate, July 2026 reporting period.

Across the 50 largest CMBS markets, $45.8 billion of $393.5 billion in outstanding balance is currently distressed, a balance-weighted rate of 11.6%. Minneapolis (55.1%), Denver (35.9%), and Oklahoma City (34.1%) lead the rankings, each shaped by a handful of very large loans rather than broad weakness, while Salt Lake City sits at zero, the cleanest metro in the Top 50. Underneath it all, the property type driving distress has shifted: multifamily distress has more than doubled since February, from 6.0% to 13.0%, while office has eased from 21.2% to 16.7%.

1. Top 50 Metros Ranked by Distress Rate

Minneapolis, Denver, and Oklahoma City top the list of most distressed metropolitan areas, followed by Portland (30.6%), Austin (28.7%), and a cluster of Midwest metros—Chicago (26.4%), Cleveland (23.6%), and Milwaukee (23.1%), plus San Francisco (21.5%). At the other end, Phoenix, Boston, Las Vegas, and Orlando sit near 3%, with San Diego (0.4%) and Salt Lake City (0%) as the most stable large markets.

Rank	Metro (MSA)	% Distress	Total Outstanding
1	Minneapolis–St. Paul–Bloomington, MN-WI	55.1%	$4.0B
2	Denver–Aurora–Centennial, CO	35.9%	$3.2B
3	Oklahoma City, OK	34.1%	$0.8B
4	Portland–Vancouver–Hillsboro, OR-WA	30.6%	$2.3B
5	Austin–Round Rock–San Marcos, TX	28.7%	$4.7B
6	St. Louis, MO-IL	26.4%	$2.1B
7	Chicago–Naperville–Elgin, IL-IN	26.4%	$16.6B
8	Cleveland, OH	23.6%	$2.3B
9	Milwaukee–Waukesha, WI	23.1%	$1.5B
10	San Francisco–Oakland–Fremont, CA	21.5%	$18.6B
11	Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN	21.2%	$1.6B
12	Hartford–West Hartford–East Hartford, CT	20.6%	$1.0B
13	Birmingham, AL	19.6%	$1.2B
14	Pittsburgh, PA	18.2%	$2.2B
15	Philadelphia–Camden–Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD	16.3%	$11.3B

2. What’s Driving It: Property Type and Region

Office remains the largest source of cumulative distress at 16.7% ($22.5 billion, roughly half of all distressed balance nationally), followed by Mixed Use (14.4%), Multifamily (13.0%), Lodging (10.6%), and Retail (8.8%); Industrial is the clear outperformer at just 1.0%.

Regionally, the Midwest’s ten metros average 22.7% distress, driven by concentrated issues in Minneapolis, Chicago, St. Louis, Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Cincinnati, while the Northeast, West, and South all cluster near 10%.

3. July Movers and the Trend Since February

In July, 180 loans totaling $992 million newly became distressed—96% of which was multifamily, led by an $84 million Houston apartment loan, with the largest single event a joint $111 million special-servicing transfer of two Santa Monica hotels. Since February, Denver has moved the most of any major metro, jumping 13.5 points (22.4% → 35.9%) on two large office defaults to become the #2 most-distressed market nationally. Minneapolis held steady at #1. Portland and Oklahoma City both improved by several points, while New York, Los Angeles, and Washington DC stayed roughly flat.

The bigger story is the property-type shift: office distress fell nearly five points since February even as multifamily more than doubled.

Deals That Drove Distress in July

Weston Medical Center Apartments (Houston, TX) — $84.0M, newly 60+ days delinquent
Ariza Forest View (Santa Rosa Beach, FL) — $61.0M, newly late (<30 days)
Mirasol (Las Vegas, NV) — $53.1M, newly delinquent at performing maturity
Solaire Bethesda (Bethesda, MD) — $49.6M, newly late (<30 days)
The Sophia Apartments (Dallas, TX) — $38.9M, newly 60+ days delinquent

Other Notable July Movers

Bank of America Tower (Midland, TX) — $19.0M, newly 121+ days delinquent; part of a five-property, ~$43M distressed office portfolio in Midland
Hawthorne At Clairmont (Atlanta, GA) — $36.6M multifamily loan, newly late
Multiple small Brooklyn, NY multifamily loans (836 DeKalb Avenue, 105–107 Vanderveer Street, 431 Grand Street) newly delinquent in July

Source: CRED iQ Proprietary Loan Analytics | Conduit & SBLL | July 2026 | cred-iq.com

Methodology

Distress rate is defined as distressed outstanding loan balance (loans currently delinquent and/or in special servicing) divided by total outstanding loan balance, for CMBS Conduit and SBLL loan pools. Rankings reflect the 50 U.S. metropolitan statistical areas with the largest total CMBS loan balance as of the July 2026 reporting period. Regional groupings assign each metro to a U.S. Census-style region (Northeast, Midwest, South, West) based on its primary state. Multi-state metros are attributed to their first-listed state.

CRED iQ provides proprietary CMBS loan-level analytics, distress surveillance, and commercial real estate data to CMBS investors, originators, brokers, and lenders. For access to the underlying loan-level dataset behind this report, visit crediq.com.

CMBS Distress Hits a 2026 High

By

Liam Mulcahy

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July 31, 2026

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CMBS distress climbed to its highest level of 2026 in July, with the Overall Distress Rate reaching 10.91%, the Special Servicing Rate 10.38%, and the Delinquency Rate 8.68% — driven primarily by a sharp jump in special servicing activity. (Source: CRED iQ CMBS Surveillance Data, July 2026 Reporting Period.)

CRED iQ’s July 2026 surveillance data shows the Overall Distress Rate for CMBS climbed to 10.91%, up 22 basis points month-over-month, driven primarily by a 42-bps jump in the Special Servicing Rate to 10.38%. The Delinquency Rate rose more modestly, to 8.68%.

For CRE and CMBS investors, brokers, and lenders trying to separate signal from noise in a choppy market, granularity is everything. CRED iQ’s July 2026 Reporting Period data offers exactly that: a loan-level view of distress across the $600+ billion CMBS universe, broken out by servicing status, deal type, property type, and metro area.

Three Numbers That Matter

Overall Distress Rate (10.91%) captures every loan that is either specially serviced or 30+ days delinquent, the broadest lens on portfolio stress. It has trended upward for three straight months, reversing April’s modest relief (9.97%).

Special Servicing Rate (10.38%) is the more forward-looking indicator, capturing loans referred for workout, modification, or foreclosure, often before a formal delinquency shows up. July’s 42-bps jump was the sharpest single-month move of the year.

Delinquency Rate (8.68%) measures loans actually missing payments. Its steadier 24-bps climb shows that while special servicing referrals are accelerating, the pace of loans going truly non-performing is more gradual, a nuance visible only when the three metrics are tracked separately rather than blended into one headline.

Why the Gap Between Special Servicing and Delinquency Matters

The widening spread between the two rates is itself a signal. When special servicing outpaces delinquency, loans are typically being transferred proactively, tied to upcoming maturities, cash management triggers, or borrower requests for relief, rather than because payments have already stopped. CRED iQ’s deal-type data shows Conduit and SASB loans behaving differently too: Conduit-sourced delinquent balances outpaced SASB in July, even as SASB’s delinquent share of its own pool stayed elevated.

Where the Distress Is Concentrated: Property Type and Metro Breakdown

The blended 10.91% headline masks real dispersion by property type. Office is the clear outlier at a 16.65% distress rate, roughly 53% above the market-wide average, with special servicing, not just missed payments, driving the sector’s stress. Mixed-use (13.01%) and Multifamily (11.21%) also run above the blended rate, while Industrial (2.35%) and Self Storage (0.28%) remain the healthiest major property types by a wide margin.

Distress is similarly uneven across metros. A handful of large markets, concentrated on the West Coast and in the Midwest, are running distress rates more than double the national average, driven almost entirely by special servicing activity rather than outright delinquency. Other major metros remain comfortably below 3%. That spread is the point: a single national number tells CRE and CMBS professionals almost nothing about which specific markets carry the risk.

Why Granularity Wins

Headline distress figures are useful for a quick read, but pricing risk, structuring a bridge loan, or advising a special servicer client requires more. CRED iQ tracks these metrics down to the individual loan, property type, MSA, and servicer, letting users isolate exactly where stress is building instead of relying on a single blended rate.

For CRE investors, brokers, and lenders who need to move from headline to loan-level insight in seconds, CRED iQ’s data and analytics platform is built precisely for that job, turning CMBS surveillance data into decision-ready intelligence.

Source: CRED iQ CMBS Surveillance Data, July 2026 Reporting Period. Descriptive, not a forecast.

About CRED iQ

CRED iQ is the enterprise data and intelligence platform powering the securitized commercial real estate market, spanning CMBS, SASB, CRE CLO, and GSE/Agency Multifamily. Delivered via web platform, API, bulk feeds, and MCP server, CRED iQ is the data provider of choice for institutional market participants and the canonical data layer for AI-driven CRE workflows. Learn more at www.cred-iq.com.