CRE This Week - What's impacting the United States market?
September 7, 2026 - US commercial real estate news, macroeconomic indicators and market analysis.
Week of September 7, 2026
Welcome to the latest edition of CRE This Week, curated by Altus Group’s US research team.
Our team has handpicked pertinent and noteworthy market indicators, articles, original research, and significant industry dates that are critical to the US commercial real estate sector. We understand that your time is valuable, so we're excited to deliver research that helps you stay informed and saves you some time each Monday morning.
For more key economic indicators that matter to commercial real estate, see Top Indicators by Major Asset Type.
Economic print
Macro economic factors impacting CRE
The Census Bureau released the Value of Construction Put in Place report for July on September 1. Total construction spending came in at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $2,157.6 billion, down 0.5% (±0.8%) from the revised June estimate and 3.8% (±1.5%) below July 2025. Private construction fell 0.5% to $1,614.2 billion, with residential down 1.3% (±1.3%, not statistically significant) to $859.0 billion while nonresidential rose 0.4% to $755.2 billion. Within nonresidential, office spending climbed 3.3% month over month and 21.3% year over year, while manufacturing fell 0.8% on the month and remains down 21.7% annually. Public construction slipped 0.2% to $543.4 billion. Year to date, total spending is running 3.5% (±1.0%) below 2025.
Office construction is now the standout in an otherwise contracting nonresidential pipeline, pointing to continued capital concentration in high-quality space rather than a broad recovery. Manufacturing's steep annual decline confirms the unwinding of the IRA and CHIPS-driven building boom, easing competition for labor and materials in industrial markets. Data center shell construction jumped to an annualized rate of more than $75 billion in July, up roughly 60% year over year, reinforcing the "Power" category's 6.5% annual gain within nonresidential and underscoring data centers as the clearest source of demand in the construction pipeline. Residential spending fell both monthly and annually, though the monthly move was within the margin of error; tight new-home supply should still support multifamily demand at the margin.
The Federal Reserve released its August 2026 Beige Book on September 2, based on information gathered from contacts through August 24. Ten of twelve Districts said economic activity grew at a slight to moderate pace, up from broader stagnation previously, while contacts reported employment rising only slightly overall. Contacts in eight Districts cited moderate price increases, with input cost pressures elevated for energy, transportation, and metals, several tied to the Middle East conflict. Nonresidential construction rose while residential construction fell, according to contacts, with data centers cited as the dominant driver of building activity in at least seven Districts.
CRE conditions were uneven across Districts. New York and Atlanta contacts reported the strongest tone, with Manhattan office vacancy at its lowest since late 2021 and Atlanta citing Class A office demand outpacing supply. Richmond and San Francisco contacts were softer, with Richmond noting four to six weeks of free rent District-wide in multifamily and San Francisco citing weaker multifamily demand and longer lease-up times. Data center construction remained the clearest bright spot nationally, while contacts described conventional office and multifamily development as still constrained by financing costs in most Districts.
Labor Market (JOLTS, ADP, Employment Situation)
BLS released July JOLTS data on September 1, showing job openings little changed at 7.3 million (4.4%), with hires down 188,000 in professional and business services. ADP reported on September 3 that private employers added just 38,000 jobs in August, the slowest pace since January, with professional services, manufacturing, and information all shedding jobs while education, health care, and hospitality led gains. Two days later, BLS reported nonfarm payrolls rose 162,000 in August, above the 31,000 average monthly gain over the prior year, with unemployment unchanged at 4.1%. Food services (+59,000) and local government education (+42,000) drove the headline number; information lost 23,000 jobs. June and July payrolls were revised up a combined 55,000.
All three reports flag the same soft spot: professional and business services, a core driver of office demand, which lost ground in both the JOLTS hires data and ADP's August read. That is a more direct signal for office leasing than the BLS headline, since the payroll beat was concentrated in food services and local government education, sectors with minimal footprint in office-using space. Manufacturing sent conflicting signals, up in the establishment survey but down in ADP, leaving industrial demand implications unclear for the month. Taken together, unemployment holding at 4.1% and the upward revisions to June and July argue against a broad labor market deterioration, but the consistent weakness in professional services hiring points to continued caution in office absorption rather than a turn toward reacceleration.
News
News to know
Enclosed malls gain new tenants (Institutional Real Estate, Inc., 2026-09-02)
Retailers are reallocating rather than retreating from physical space even as U.S. store openings near a six-year low, according to Coresight Research. IKEA led net square footage announced in July at roughly 1.2 million square feet, mixing traditional big-box stores with smaller city-format locations of 50,000 to 90,000 square feet, some moving into enclosed malls such as Destiny USA in Syracuse, N.Y. Higher-quality malls are backfilling former department-store space with tenants like Primark, Dick's Sporting Goods and Netflix House, often at improved rents, while lower-tier malls continue to struggle with similar vacancies. Large-format openings above 15,000 square feet were most concentrated in Jacksonville, Fla., Raleigh, N.C. and Columbus, Ohio in the first half of 2026.
A Data Center Revolt By Historic Battlefield Is Now a Blueprint for Backlash (Bloomberg, 2026-09-02)
A $100 billion data center campus in Prince William County, Virginia, backed by Blackstone and Brookfield, has collapsed after a five-year community opposition campaign. The Digital Gateway would have spanned roughly 3,700 acres and required about 3.5 gigawatts of power, comparable to Tampa's electricity needs. Local opponents, including a homeowners association and preservation groups tied to the adjacent Manassas National Battlefield, won litigation over a procedural notice error in the project's 2023 zoning approval, prompting Brookfield's Compass Datacenters to withdraw in April and Blackstone's QTS to follow in July. The collapse adds to a broader pattern of local pushback against data center development, with New York enacting a moratorium and Texas imposing effective freezes on new projects, highlighting rising entitlement and community-relations risk for large-scale digital infrastructure investment.
Retailers Charging Ahead With EV Stations Despite Policy Pullback (Bisnow, 2026-09-03)
Retailers are accelerating EV charger installations on owned parking lots even as federal incentives shrink, treating chargers as value-add infrastructure that extends dwell time and generates proprietary customer data. Operators added 4,382 new charging ports across 806 stations in Q2 2026, bringing the nationwide total to just under 78,000, with charging sessions up 29% year-over-year to 3.5 million in June. Walmart leads the big-box push, recently opening its 100th location and targeting thousands by 2030, while convenience chains including Buc-ee's, Circle K, Sheetz and Wawa are expanding branded networks through white-label financing models that shift upfront capital costs off property owners. New EV sales flattened at about 1.2 million in 2025, but the used EV market grew 10.1% year-over-year in July, sustaining demand for charging infrastructure.
New Fidelity Office Is Built to Get Staff Back Five Days a Week (Bloomberg, 2026-09-04)
Fidelity Investments opened a new 735,000-square-foot waterfront headquarters in Boston's Seaport district this week, a redevelopment of the historic Commonwealth Pier designed around in-person collaboration. The move accompanies a shift from Fidelity's prior hybrid policy to a five-day in-office mandate for Boston employees starting in September. Rather than exiting its 855,000-square-foot downtown headquarters as originally planned, Fidelity is keeping both buildings to accommodate its more than 6,000 Boston employees daily, making it an anchor tenant in two districts where office vacancy stood at 20% as of the second quarter, up from single digits pre-pandemic, according to CBRE. The company's Boston headcount grew 24% from 2016 to 2025, and the move comes as assets under management reached $7.8 trillion in the second quarter, up 23% year-over-year. The pier redevelopment also adds retail space and a new home for the Museum of American Finance.
AI Job Losses Won't Translate Directly Into Lower Office Demand (GlobeSt, 2026-09-04)
A new JLL analysis finds U.S. technology employment fell 1.5% between 2025 and 2026, yet office leasing by tech companies continued to rebound, showing AI-related job displacement does not translate directly into lost office demand. JLL attributes the disconnect to AI company expansion, higher workplace utilization and a persistent shortage of premium office space, with displacement so far concentrated in entry-level, administrative and back-office roles rather than headquarters, trading floors or revenue-generating functions. Market-level exposure is similarly uneven: San Francisco combines high potential displacement with high job-creation potential, with AI companies accounting for nearly 30% of the city's leasing since 2025. JLL's 2026 Future of Work survey found 60% of companies expect to expand headcount over the next three to five years, though technology and financial services are more likely to pursue smaller, more productive teams than logistics, health care and hospitality.
Persistently elevated mortgage rates continue pushing renters into multifamily and single-family rentals. The average 30-year fixed rate stood at 6.66% for the week ending August 27, up from 6.56% a year earlier. New single-family home sales fell 10.5% month-over-month in July to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 607,000 units, while the median new home price fell 2.3% month-over-month to $393,800. Industry sources note owning is now roughly 50% more expensive than renting, and single-family construction starts are down about 70%, tightening the competing supply pipeline. Multifamily lenders report strong refinancing activity in 2026 despite muted acquisition volume, with one major lender's multifamily transitional and high-yield strategies rising to 65% of its book from about 55% last year. Conditions remain uneven by market: oversupplied Sun Belt metros still see rent concessions, while supply-constrained East Coast and Midwest markets are seeing rents rise.
INSIGHTS Spotlight
Catch the latest research and insights from Altus
Article | US commercial real estate transaction analysis – Q2 2026
In this analysis, we dig into the data from our Q2 US CRE Investment and Transactions Quarterly report, covering national transaction volume and pricing trends across major property sectors, shifts in the median age of transacted properties, and the growing concentration of deal value in transactions exceeding $10 million.
Report | Q2 2026 US CRE investment and transactions quarterly
US CRE transaction activity gained momentum in Q2, with total dollars transacted up 11.3% quarter-over-quarter and 9.4% year-over-year, and square footage transacted growing 10.3% QoQ. Median price per square foot for single-property transactions climbed 8.6% annually, with industrial leading every sector at 13.2% and storage leading every subtype at 24.0% YoY.
Important dates
Upcoming data releases and events
Data releases (Times in EDT)
Monday, September 7
Labor Day — Markets Closed
Tuesday, September 8
6:00AM: NFIB Small Business Optimism Index (Aug)
3:00PM: Consumer Credit (Jul)
Thursday, September 10
8:30AM: Weekly Jobless Claims (Sep 5)
8:30AM: Producer Price Index (PPI) (Aug)
10:00AM: Monthly Wholesale Trade (Jul)
10:00AM: Existing Home Sales (Aug)
Friday, September 11
8:30AM: Consumer Price Index (CPI) (Aug)
10:00AM: University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment – Preliminary (Sep)
2:00PM: Monthly Treasury Balance (Aug)
About our research team
Omar Eltorai
Senior Director of Research
Altus Group
Omar Eltorai is a Research Director at Altus Group. With more than a decade of experience in the industry in investment management and financing roles,
Omar's focus is on macro, capital and market trends affecting the US CRE market. Beyond regularly authoring articles and reports, his commentary and analysis has been featured in various media publications, including: Wall Street Journal, Globe Street, and Yahoo! Finance.
Cole Perry
Associate Director of Research
Altus Group
Cole Perry is a Associate Director of Research with Altus Group's Research team. In this role, Cole delivers key insights into macroeconomics, capital markets, and the broader commercial real estate sector.
Cole boasts a rich background in Commercial Real Estate analytics with previous roles at CompStak and Brixmor Property Group. He holds dual M.S. degrees from Columbia University in Urban Planning and Real Estate Development.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this newsletter are solely those of the authors and are not endorsed by Altus Group Limited, its affiliates and its related entities (collectively “Altus Group”). This publication has been prepared for general guidance on matters of interest only and does not constitute professional advice or services of Altus Group. You should not act upon the information contained in this publication without obtaining specific professional advice. No representation or warranty (express or implied) is given as to the accuracy, completeness or reliability of the information contained in this publication, or the suitability of the information for a particular purpose. To the extent permitted by law, Altus Group does not accept or assume any liability, responsibility or duty of care for any consequences of you or anyone else acting, or refraining to act, in reliance on the information contained in this publication or for any decision based on it. The distribution of this publication to you does not create, extend or revive a client relationship between Altus Group and you or any other person or entity. This publication, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced or distributed in any form for any purpose without the express written consent of Altus Group.
Resources
Latest insights
