CRE This Week - What's impacting the United States market?
August 24, 2026 - US commercial real estate news, macroeconomic indicators and market analysis.
Week of August 24, 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
New Residential Construction and the NAHB Housing Market Index
The Census Bureau and HUD released New Residential Construction data for July on August 18. Building permits rose 5.0% to a SAAR of 1.443 million, with single-family permits up 2.5% to 894,000 and multifamily (5+ unit) permits up 9.1% to 490,000. Housing starts fell 12.4% (±9.5%) to 1.239 million, and single-family starts dropped 9.9% (±10.4%) to 808,000 from a revised 897,000 in June; both monthly declines fall within the margin of error and are not statistically significant. Starts on buildings of five units or more fell 15.6% to 421,000. Separately, NAHB released its August Housing Market Index (HMI) on August 17, showing builder confidence up one point to 35, with current sales conditions up two points to 39 and sales expectations and buyer traffic unchanged.
Builder sentiment and single-family starts have historically tracked each other with a lag, so the modest HMI gain suggests July's starts decline overstates any real deterioration in single-family construction, though a reading of 35 still points to a market builders view as weak. The more relevant signal for CRE is the permits-versus-starts split: single-family and multifamily permits both grew in July, but multifamily starts fell sharply, widening the gap between planned and actual groundbreaking. A thinning multifamily construction pipeline supports occupancy and rent growth for existing apartment stock over the next 12 to 18 months, even as broader housing weakness continues to weigh on construction employment and related consumer spending.
The National Association of Realtors released the Pending Home Sales Index for July on August 18, showing a 2.3% decline month over month to an index reading of 71.2, the lowest level since January 2026. Contract signings fell across all four major regions, down 4.7% in the West, 2.2% in the South, 2.0% in the Northeast, and 0.7% in the Midwest. On a year-over-year basis, the index was down 2.2%, with the Midwest the only region posting a gain (+1.7%) while the West, South, and Northeast fell 7.1%, 3.0%, and 0.2%, respectively.
The pullback tracks mortgage rates reaching their highest level of the year in mid-summer, which is lengthening time on market and reducing the share of homes selling above list price even as prices sit at record highs. NAR noted pending contracts remain roughly 30% below 2019 levels while payroll employment sits 5% above pre-pandemic levels, a gap pointing to demand that has not yet converted into closings. Metro-level performance varies sharply within regions: Cincinnati and San Antonio each posted mid-to-high single-digit annual gains, showing that local affordability and inventory conditions are driving contract activity more than any single region-wide trend. For CRE, continued softness in for-sale contract activity supports multifamily demand at the margin as affordability-constrained households extend renter tenure.
FOMC Minutes (July 28-29 Meeting)
The Fed released its July 28-29 minutes on August 19. The Committee held rates at 3.50% to 3.75% in a 9-3 vote, with Hammack, Kashkari, and Logan dissenting in favor of a hike. Beyond what Fed Chair Kevin Warsh covered in his press conference, the minutes flagged CMBS and small business loan credit performance as "somewhat weak," noted that lending standards from the Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey (SLOOS) remain tighter than historical norms in every category except C&I, and cited large price increases in data center inputs such as chips and steel. Staff also described financial stability vulnerabilities as "notable," pointing to hedge fund leverage near record highs and elevated equity valuations.
The CMBS flag is notable because it comes from Fed staff surveillance rather than a servicer or ratings agency, and it corroborates the delinquency trends already showing up in servicer data. The SLOOS detail adds nuance to the credit availability narrative: C&I standards have eased below historical norms, but CRE remains tighter than the post-2005 average, meaning this year's broader lending recovery has not extended evenly to property-secured debt. The chip and steel cost detail gives a concrete anchor to what has mostly been qualitative commentary on data center construction budgets. Elevated hedge fund leverage is worth flagging given how much private credit capacity backing CRE debt today sits with similarly leveraged, less-regulated sources.
News
News to know
New housing law boosts prospects for factory-built homes (The Wall Street Journal, August 18, 2026)
The SEC clarified that a major subset of data center asset-backed securities are not subject to post-2008 securitization rules, including risk retention requirements, because data centers are physical assets rather than financial assets that liquidate over time. The guidance, issued in response to a law firm inquiry, stops short of a formal rule change but will have practical consequences for issuers that had been applying the rules as a precaution. Data center ABS issuance has grown from $2.4 billion in 2020 to $15.5 billion annually last year and is on pace for a new record in 2026. The exemption does not extend to CMBS backed by data centers, which remain subject to existing rules because the collateral is a mortgage rather than the underlying physical assets.
New York City's next multifamily shortage? Buildings to buy (Commercial Observer, August 18, 2026)
According to Alpha Realty's second-quarter 2026 multifamily market report, New York City recorded 304 multifamily transactions in the quarter, up 10.5% from Q1 despite elevated borrowing costs, continuing a trend of improving deal velocity even as pricing has yet to fully reset. Buildings with 20 or more units accounted for roughly 57% of citywide dollar volume, with Manhattan dollar volume nearly doubling year-over-year and deal count up more than 60% as buyers competed aggressively for scale and quality assets. Brooklyn led all boroughs in transaction count, while the Bronx saw activity rebound sharply from the first quarter. New construction from the slower-moving 485-x program, the replacement for the expired 421-a tax incentive, is unlikely to meaningfully add supply in the near term, leaving well-located, free-market buildings increasingly scarce.
Multifamily investors face a new insurance question (GlobeSt, August 18, 2026)
Florida multifamily insurance costs are moderating after years of sharp increases, with median premiums for securitized properties rising 42.4% in 2023, slowing to 7.7% growth in 2024, and declining 6.2% in 2025, according to forthcoming Trepp research. That reversal contrasts with the rest of the country, where median costs rose 11.1% in 2024 and 3.5% in 2025, meaning Florida's relief is now outpacing broader market trends after years of underperforming them. The improvement should support net operating income, debt-service coverage and refinance capacity for Florida owners, but the decline follows an accumulated cost base that remains well above pre-2023 levels, and the state's exposure to hurricane losses means a single active storm season could reverse the trend. The analysis cautions lenders and buyers against capitalizing the recent decline into long-term underwriting assumptions, recommending a distinction between in-place premiums, normalized expense projections and stress-case scenarios that account for renewed catastrophe-driven repricing.
Rent concessions dip as fewer apartments come online (Bisnow, August 19, 2026)
Apartment concession use fell for a second straight month in July, with 15.8% of stabilized units offering discounts, down 70 basis points from June, according to RealPage. Concessions are diverging by quality, falling for Class-A and rising for Class-C. U.S. apartment vacancy fell below 9% for the first time since 2024, dropping 35 basis points to 8.9% in the second quarter, per Cushman & Wakefield, as absorption rose 8% year-over-year to 124,600 units. Multifamily starts fell 7.1% year-over-year in July to 421,000 units, with first-half 2026 starts the lowest since 2012, while deliveries dropped 25.6% annually. CoStar Group has since upgraded its outlook, projecting vacancy will fall to 8.2% by year-end with 1.4% rent growth in the third quarter.
Baltimore has cut its stock of vacant homes by nearly a third over the past decade, with investors now bidding well above asking price for boarded-up, blighted properties in a reversal from the disinvestment those homes once symbolized. One recent auction saw a plumber and part-time investor pay $45,000 for a vacant rowhouse with plans to spend $130,000 on renovations before reselling it for more than $300,000, illustrating the margins now drawing capital into a market long considered uninvestable. The city has used the momentum to launch a plan aiming to eliminate vacant housing entirely by 2038. Baltimore's median home price sits at $235,333, well below the $381,333 national median, giving investors room to acquire distressed properties, fund renovations, and resell at a markup even after accounting for rehab costs.
The seniors against senior housing (Bloomberg Businessweek, August 19, 2026)
Senior housing developers are facing organized opposition from the elderly homeowners the projects are meant to serve, illustrated by two market-rate proposals in Oakland's Rockridge neighborhood totaling 618 units. One would replace a former Red Cross building with roughly 203 independent living, assisted living and memory care units; the other would replace a Trader Joe's with 415 units across two towers, scaled back from 31 and 25 stories to 26 and 23 stories after pushback, with added ground-floor retail to retain the grocery store. Nationally, senior housing occupancy sits at 92.5%, and NIC MAP estimates the U.S. will need 582,000 additional units by 2030 as the 80-plus population doubles to 29.4 million by 2045, even as construction has declined through the current demand cycle. Similar resistance has surfaced in Milwaukee, a Chicago suburb and Stamford, Connecticut, though recent California legislation, including density bonuses and mandates for high-income areas, is making such objections harder to sustain.
NAR launches quarterly index for commercial real estate demand (HousingWire, August 19, 2026)
The National Association of Realtors introduced a Commercial Real Estate Demand Index tracking early economic drivers of space demand across 306 U.S. metros, built from public government data with quarterly history back to 2022. The index combines four weighted subindices: industrial and multifamily each carry 28%, office and retail each carry 22%. Office demand is measured by professional and business services job growth, industrial by manufacturing, transportation and warehousing employment, retail by retail trade and leisure and hospitality employment, and multifamily by population growth and net migration. Each metro is scored relative to the other 305 tracked markets, with 100 representing the average; a sub-100 score does not necessarily mean contraction, only slower relative momentum. The index does not capture vacancy, rents, absorption or national-level demand, and NAR plans a quarterly companion analysis on rankings and property-type trends.
Fed Hawks add to CRE debt concerns (GlobeSt, August 21, 2026)
Three Federal Reserve officials, Cleveland Fed CEO Beth Hammack, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari and Dallas Fed CEO Lorie Logan, dissented in favor of a 25 basis point hike at the July 29 FOMC meeting, the first time since 2016 three members have dissented in the same direction. The Fed held rates steady, but dissenters cited broad-based inflation pressure from tariffs, energy costs and AI-related capital spending. The 10-year Treasury yield closed the week at 4.70% and the 30-year at 5.25%, while the Treasury Department doubled its weekly debt buyback pace to $4 billion, keeping long-term borrowing costs elevated independent of Fed action. CME FedWatch data show markets pricing roughly two-to-one odds against a September hike, but odds shift toward a roughly two-thirds probability of a hike by December. For CRE borrowers, that raises the risk of higher floating-rate and construction financing costs on top of already-elevated permanent mortgage rates tied to Treasury yields.
INSIGHTS Spotlight
Catch the latest research and insights from Altus
Podcast | Where is OB3 one year later, and what's next for opportunity zones?
A year after the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed and with Opportunity Zones now entering a second act, the tax and structuring landscape for CRE has evolved. In this episode of CRE Exchange, Cole Perry and Omar Eltorai sit down with Lisa Knee, Managing Partner of Real Estate Services at EisnerAmper, to unpack what has changed. Lisa shares her knowledge on which OB3 provisions are impacting deals a year later, walks through the mechanics of Opportunity Zones 2.0, including the adjustment to a permanent program with rolling five-year deferrals, and discusses what she’s seeing in fund formation as investors demand more transparency and standardized reporting.
Article | CRE debt markets hit a rate floor in Q2 2026
SOFR has essentially bottomed out after nearly two years of decline, and Treasury yields are moving higher, leaving borrowing costs flat quarter-over-quarter. The product mix is already responding: borrowers are rotating toward fixed-rate financing as the case for waiting on further relief fades. Our latest US Debt Capital Markets Survey covers where pricing stands at the midpoint of the year and what the setup looks like from here.
Article | Where value is created in data center land
What actually prices data center land per acre? Our Valuation Advisory team reviewed 80 verified transactions and found that three variables explain most of the variation: committed power capacity, infrastructure proximity, and parcel size. The analysis also looks at why transaction records can understate the de-risking work already embedded in a site's price.
Important dates
Upcoming data releases and events
Data releases (Times in EDT)
Tuesday, August 25
9:00AM: S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Index (Jun)
10:00AM: New Home Sales (Jul)
10:00AM: Conference Board Consumer Confidence (Aug)
Wednesday, August 26
8:30AM: Durable Goods (Jul)
8:30AM: GDP Second Estimate (Q2)
8:30AM: Personal Income (Jul)
8:30AM: Consumer Spending (Jul)
8:30AM: PCE Price Index (Jul)
Thursday, August 27
8:30AM: Weekly Jobless Claims (Aug 22)
8:30AM: Advance U.S. Trade Balance in Goods (Jul)
8:30AM: Wholesale Inventories (Jul)
8:30AM: Retail Inventories (Jul)
11:00AM: Kansas City Fed Survey (Aug)
Friday, August 28
9:45AM: Chicago PMI (Aug)
10:00AM: University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment – Final (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.
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