Something unusual is happening in the CRE debt markets in 2026 — and it directly affects every sponsor, operator, and capital allocator that HB Capital works with. Banks are back. Private credit is surging simultaneously. CMBS issuance is at multi-year highs. And yet none of these capital sources are competing with each other in the way the conventional wisdom predicted. Instead, they are working together — expanding the overall lending ecosystem at exactly the moment when approximately $875 billion in commercial mortgages are scheduled to mature this year. For borrowers who understand how this landscape has changed, 2026 is offering the most diverse and accessible debt capital environment since before the rate cycle began. For borrowers who are still operating from the 2023 or 2024 playbook — when lenders were scarce and selective — there is a meaningful cost to that misreading.

The Headline That Shouldn’t Make Sense — But Does

The conventional wisdom heading into 2026 was straightforward: as banks return to CRE lending, private credit loses market share. More competition from traditional lenders means private credit pulls back to safer ground, spreads tighten, and the market normalizes.

The data says the opposite happened. Banks originated $455 billion in CRE loans in Q1 2026 alone — an 80% increase from Q1 2025. Private market lending surged 133% over the same period. Overall commercial and multifamily borrowing rose 52% year-over-year. All three capital sources grew simultaneously and dramatically. The lending pie did not get redistributed. It got bigger.

The explanation for this lies in a structural shift that has quietly redefined how CRE capital stacks are assembled. Banks and private lenders are no longer competing for the same positions in the same deals. They are collaborating — banks providing A notes, note-on-note financing, and back-leverage facilities to private lenders; private lenders providing the creative structuring, speed, and flexibility that traditional bank credit committees cannot match. The result is a capital ecosystem where the combination of both sources makes more deals financeable than either could accomplish alone.

The $875 Billion Maturity Wall — Threat or Opportunity?

The single most consequential number in the 2026 CRE debt market is $875 billion — the approximate volume of commercial mortgages scheduled to mature this year per the Mortgage Bankers Association. That figure represents the largest refinancing wave the sector has ever faced, and it has been driving anxiety in the market since it first appeared in forward projections three years ago.

The anxiety was warranted in 2023 and 2024, when the lending market was thin, rates were high, and values had corrected sharply. Many sponsors facing maturity events had limited options: extend with their existing lender at punitive terms, execute a distressed sale, or inject new equity to reduce loan-to-value ratios before any new lender would engage.

The 2026 version of this conversation looks materially different. With bank lending up 80%, private credit up 133%, CMBS at multi-year highs, and the MBA forecasting 20.5% growth in originations and refinancing, borrowers coming to market for refinancing in 2026 have more lender options, more creative structuring possibilities, and more competitive pricing than at any point since the rate cycle began. That does not mean every maturity event has an easy solution — assets with genuine fundamental impairment are still difficult to refinance regardless of capital market conditions. But for well-located, stabilized, or recovering assets, the refinancing conversation in 2026 is a fundamentally different one than it was 18 months ago.

Who Is Lending What in 2026

Understanding which lender type fits which deal is the core of HB Capital’s advisory value. The 2026 lending landscape has three primary capital sources, each with a distinct role in the capital stack.

The shift toward bank-private collaboration is the most important structural development for borrowers to understand. In practice, this means a deal that previously required a single lender to take on all the risk can now be structured with a bank providing a senior A note at lower leverage and pricing, and a private credit fund sitting behind it with a B note or mezzanine piece — together reaching a total leverage and term structure that neither could offer alone. This collaborative stack approach is expanding the universe of financeable deals and is showing up in transaction data across every major property type.

Where Each Property Type Stands in the Debt Markets

The Risk Picture: What Could Tighten This Market

Any honest mid-2026 read of the lending landscape must name the risks directly. There are three that HB Capital is tracking closely.

Rate uncertainty. The rate relief that markets had been pricing into 2026 — two Fed cuts and a lower 10-year — has largely evaporated. The 10-year Treasury surged 34 basis points over a two-week stretch in late spring, pushing fixed-rate permanent financing costs higher and keeping SOFR-based bridge borrowers under pressure. Until the Fed provides clearer forward guidance, rate volatility remains the primary underwriting risk for any deal with a fixed maturity event in the next 12 to 18 months.

Private credit stress (second-order risk). While CRE-specific private credit is performing well, the broader private credit ecosystem is showing signs of late-cycle stress in corporate direct lending — rising payment-in-kind (PIK) usage, some high-profile defaults, and redemption gates at certain vehicles. If stress in software-sector private credit portfolios forces some lenders to reduce new originations, the availability and pricing of transitional CRE capital could tighten — not because of CRE fundamentals, but because of contagion from adjacent asset classes.

Office delinquencies as a CMBS wildcard. Office delinquencies rose 150 basis points over the past year and now sit near 18% in conduit CMBS. Moody’s identifies Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C. as markets where demand recovery is insufficient to reduce vacancy — and where continued defaults could push conduit delinquencies higher. A significant office default wave in CMBS could widen spreads across property types through contagion, even for well-performing sectors.

What HB Capital Is Watching

• 1The bank-private collaboration structure as the dominant deal architecture. The most competitive executions we are seeing in 2026 combine a bank A note with a private credit B note or mezzanine piece — unlocking total leverage and flexibility that neither lender could provide alone. Sponsors who understand this structure have a meaningful execution advantage over those still looking for a single-source solution.
• 2The maturity wall as a sourcing opportunity. With $875 billion in maturities scheduled for 2026, distressed and transitional refinancing situations will continue to surface throughout the year. Sponsors with equity ready to recapitalize and lenders with flexible mandates are finding compelling entry points in assets where the incumbent lender simply cannot extend.
• 3Agency debt for multifamily while windows are open. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are pricing aggressively on stabilized multifamily paper — competitively with life company rates and well inside bank pricing on a risk-adjusted basis. This window is rate-sensitive. Sponsors with eligible assets should be locking in execution now rather than waiting for further rate clarity.
• 4CMBS CRE CLO growth as a transitional execution tool. The CRE CLO market is growing specifically because it accommodates transitional assets and floating-rate strategies that conduit CMBS cannot. For value-add sponsors and bridge borrowers who need speed, flexibility, and non-recourse execution, CRE CLOs are the fastest-growing and most underutilized tool in the current lending environment.

Executive Takeaway

The CRE debt markets in 2026 are, by almost every quantitative measure, the most active and accessible they have been since before the rate cycle began. Banks are back at scale. Private credit is growing simultaneously. CMBS issuance is near records. And the collaboration between these capital sources — rather than competition — is producing financing solutions that were simply not available 18 months ago.

That is the good news. The nuanced news is that access to this capital is not uniform. The $875 billion maturity wave will produce both straightforward refinancing wins and difficult workouts, often for assets in the same city or even the same submarket. The difference will come down to asset quality, property type fundamentals, and — critically — whether the sponsor has access to the right lender for the specific risk profile of the deal.

That is the work HB Capital does on every transaction: matching the capital source to the asset, the business plan to the debt structure, and the execution timeline to the lender’s mandate. In a market this active and this varied, that matching function has never been more valuable.

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