With the crest of a wave of maturities in the rearview mirror, the commercial real estate industry is expected to originate more new loans in 2026.
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Commercial real estate and multifamily debt maturities will drop 9% year-over-year to $875B, according to a forecast from the Mortgage Bankers Association, first reported by Bloomberg.
MBA predicts the level of debt maturities will continue to fall through 2031. And as maturities recede, more new loans are expected.
Lenders are projected to originate $805B worth of commercial mortgages this year, up 27% from 2025, MBA forecasts. The prediction includes $399B worth of multifamily lending, a nearly 21% increase from last year.
The prediction is partly based on strong lending activity throughout 2025, MBA Associate Vice President of Commercial Real Estate Research Judith Ricks said.
“We believe much of this activity came from refinance and acquisition activity as borrowers were able to take advantage of relatively favorable rates,” she said at an MBA event, according to the organization's recap.
“As a result, we expect this to reduce the amount of mortgage debt scheduled to mature over the next few years.”
This doesn’t mean the entire industry is out of the woods yet. There is still $167B worth of outstanding office loans set to mature this year and another $123B in 2027. The metric is then expected to drop to $76B in 2028.
MBA Chief Economist Mike Fratantoni expressed some broad unease about interest rate and unemployment at the event.
He said MBA predicts GDP growth will fall from 2.3% last year to 1.9% this year and then to 1.7% in 2027. The organization predicts unemployment will average 4.5% this year, up 0.2% from 2025.
“With the job market softening but inflation staying stubbornly above the Fed’s 2% target, we expect only one cut in the federal funds target this year,” Fratantoni said.
“Persistently large federal budget deficits, and growing pressure on sovereign debt markets worldwide, will put pressure on the longer-term rates, and we expect further steepening of the Treasury yield curve as a result.”
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