For five years, commercial real estate’s executive suites grew steadily less white and less male. 

This year, for the first time since Bisnow began measuring the industry’s diversity in 2020, they grew more of both.

The move itself is modest. Women's C-suite share descended from 20.8% to 19.5%, and people of color slipped from 14.8% to 14.4%. But the losses were sharper in some sectors, like lenders, where people of color on the C-suite declined 2.5 percentage points, and brokerages, where women fell by 3 points.

The cause is not subtle. A White House that treats diversity hiring as potential fraud against the federal government has turned the old playbook — widen the candidate pool then hire the best of it — from standard practice into legal exposure.

Under pressure and out of fear of government retaliation, firms have quietly stopped running it. The executives it once installed are, one advocate told us, already heading for the door.

This year, the crackdown also found a new, unexpected target: the landlord rather than just the employer. Firms that lease office space to Washington, long the safest tenant relationship in real estate, are now being asked to certify they run no DEI programs at all, or risk forfeiting leases once treated as the safest bet in the business.

Neither shock should have reversed five years of gradual progress, but in 2026, they did just that.

To read the last seven years of Bisnow’s DEI Data Series, click here.

— Mark F. Bonner, Bisnow Editor-in-Chief

Sept. 17, 2026