{"id":5425,"date":"2026-08-07T04:15:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T04:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cred-iq.com\/blog\/?p=5425"},"modified":"2026-08-07T04:15:25","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T04:15:25","slug":"cre-cmbs-distress-report-top-50-u-s-metro-rankings-and-whats-driving-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cred-iq.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/07\/cre-cmbs-distress-report-top-50-u-s-metro-rankings-and-whats-driving-them\/","title":{"rendered":"CRE & CMBS Distress Report: Top 50 U.S. Metro Rankings and What’s Driving Them"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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%.<\/em><\/p>\n\n

1. Top 50 Metros Ranked by Distress Rate<\/h2>\n\n

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

2. What’s Driving It: Property Type and Region<\/h2>\n\n

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%.<\/p>\n\n

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%.<\/p>\n\n

3. July Movers and the Trend Since February<\/h2>\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n

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

Deals That Drove Distress in July<\/h2>\n\n
    \n
  • Weston Medical Center Apartments (Houston, TX) — $84.0M, newly 60+ days delinquent<\/li>\n
  • Ariza Forest View (Santa Rosa Beach, FL) — $61.0M, newly late (<30 days)<\/li>\n
  • Mirasol (Las Vegas, NV) — $53.1M, newly delinquent at performing maturity<\/li>\n
  • Solaire Bethesda (Bethesda, MD) — $49.6M, newly late (<30 days)<\/li>\n
  • The Sophia Apartments (Dallas, TX) — $38.9M, newly 60+ days delinquent<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n

    Other Notable July Movers<\/h3>\n\n
      \n
    • Bank of America Tower (Midland, TX) — $19.0M, newly 121+ days delinquent; part of a five-property, ~$43M distressed office portfolio in Midland<\/li>\n
    • Hawthorne At Clairmont (Atlanta, GA) — $36.6M multifamily loan, newly late<\/li>\n
    • Multiple small Brooklyn, NY multifamily loans (836 DeKalb Avenue, 105–107 Vanderveer Street, 431 Grand Street) newly delinquent in July<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n

      Source: CRED iQ Proprietary Loan Analytics  |  Conduit & SBLL  |  July 2026  |  cred-iq.com<\/p>\n\n

      Methodology<\/h2>\n\n

      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.<\/p>\n\n

      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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":5426,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cred-iq.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cred-iq.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cred-iq.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cred-iq.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cred-iq.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5425"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cred-iq.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5427,"href":"https:\/\/cred-iq.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5425\/revisions\/5427"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cred-iq.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cred-iq.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cred-iq.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cred-iq.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}