The so-called “wall of maturities” is a perennial source of investor anxiety: will refinancing risk create a wave of defaults? Given nearly $900bn of loans maturing in 2026 and more than $2tn coming due over the next three years, that concern is understandable. However, the experience of recent maturities suggests outcomes have been far less dire than feared and offers a useful roadmap for what lies ahead.

Loans maturing in 2023 ($728bn), 2024 ($929bn), and 2025 ($957bn) did not lead to a collapse in commercial real estate (CRE) debt like many media headlines suggested (“U.S. Commercial Real Estate Is Headed Toward a Crisis” - Harvard Business Review; July 2024). While it is often assumed that lenders are merely “extending & pretending” loans through modifications - effectively kicking the can down the road - data from the CMBS conduit market tells a more nuanced story. A meaningful share of loans have paid off at or before maturity. Specifically, 73% of CMBS conduit loans originally scheduled to mature in 2025 paid off on time versus the 73% payoff rate for 2024 maturities and 81% observed in 2023. This is only slightly below the historical average payoff rate since 2012 of 78%.

Against this backdrop, we introduce a new framework to assess potential capital gaps and surpluses. For each property type, we construct a “box-and-whisker” analysis to visualize the distribution of potential outcomes across nearly 400 markets by quartile, highlighting dispersion, skewness, and outliers in a compact format. This analysis is intended as a theoretical, top-down tool to identify where risks may be concentrated, rather than a substitute for property or loan level underwriting, which is constrained by limited transparency across all lender types. Within any given market, individual asset outcomes may diverge, potentially meaningfully, from the representative result, and such differences should be evaluated separately in asset level decision making.

To evaluate where refinancing risk is potentially most acute, we analyze the range of capital gaps / surpluses across property types and markets assuming loans were originated on a rolling quarterly basis. Using Real Capital Analytics data, we estimate changes in lending conditions at the national level, while CoStar data is used to estimate market level valuation changes driven by NOI growth and cap rate movements. Please see Appendix: Methodology for a more detailed analysis.

The difference between estimated refinance proceeds and the outstanding loan balance at maturity determines whether there’s a gap (equity required) or a surplus (excess borrowing capacity). For example, consider a property valued at $100 million that was financed at a 50% loan-to-value (LTV) ratio in 2016. If the property’s value subsequently declined by 20%, the effective LTV would rise to 62.5%. To restore the loan to a 50% LTV, the borrower would need to reduce the loan balance to $40 million to be refinanced, implying a $10 million equity injection (i.e., the gap). By contrast, a 20% increase in property value would reduce the effective LTV to 41.7%, enabling the borrower to increase the loan balance by $10 million to $60 million at refinance (i.e., the surplus).

We plot the range of outcomes across markets in what’s known as a “box-and-whisker” analysis or box plot to visualize the five-number summary of the data—minimum, first quartile (Q1), median, third quartile (Q3), and maximum—and highlights dispersion, skewness, and outliers in a compact form. Box-and-whisker analysis is especially useful for comparing distributions across groups (e.g., markets, vintages, or property types) and for assessing downside risk, dispersion, and asymmetry without relying on assumptions about normality. 

Across U.S. CRE, refinancing outcomes are not uniform but instead show wide dispersion across markets and property types. While many markets retain a positive refinance cushion, others exhibit deep capital impairment that cannot be resolved through modest income growth or incremental leverage adjustments.

The variety of outcomes explains why aggregate indicators can both understate and overstate refinancing risk. And it underscores why headlines are inherently flawed as they are overly simplistic. Indeed, our analysis suggests that a relatively small subset of markets and property types accounts for a disproportionate share of negative capital gaps, reinforcing that refinancing challenges are concentrated rather than systemic. This is consistent with our cycle of selectivity thesis we outlined in our 2026 Inside Real Estate Annual Outlook.

The nature of these nuances becomes clearest when assessed at the sector level, where structural differences in demand, valuation trends, and geographic exposure drive materially different refinancing profiles.

While the office sector does face meaningful challenges, those challenges are less widespread than often portrayed and are driven disproportionately by a limited number of markets. As the market works through the wall of maturities, this distinction matters. In practical terms, an office building in Charlotte or Miami may be able to refinance under current conditions, while a similar building in San Francisco may require significant new equity— even though both face the same maturity schedule. 

For the industrial sector, refinancing risk is more cyclical rather than structural. The sector faces some late cycle pressure as higher leverage and tighter valuation conditions reduce excess borrowing capacity today, but the data does not support broad industrial distress driven by the upcoming maturity wave. Instead, most industrial markets continue to exhibit sufficient income and value support to refinance, albeit with less margin for error than in earlier vintages. 

Taken together, this analysis suggests that retail’s vulnerability to the wall of maturities is highly market specific. This is consistent with our analysis of retail payoff rates across CMBS conduit loans that stand near sector averages at 78% for loans originally scheduled to mature in 2023 vs. 77% in 2024 and 74% in 2025. Furthermore, the private-label CMBS delinquency rate for retail stands at approximately 6.5% as of January 2026, compared to the overall delinquency rate of approximately 6.7%. The sector is neither insulated from late cycle pressure nor broadly impaired. Instead, refinancing outcomes hinge on local fundamentals, asset quality, and tenant mix, with many markets still retaining sufficient income and value support to refinance under current conditions. 

Apartment refinancing risk is not driven by large, regionally clustered distress, but by incremental differences in income growth and valuation across markets. This reinforces our views that we expressed in our 2025 report titled America’s housing opportunity: Beyond the supply gap. We argued that the U.S. rentership market is highly fragmented. The core challenge is not simply the number of homes, but whether they are in the right places, of the right type, and at prices households can afford. Addressing these dynamics, therefore, requires a holistic approach that spans the full rental spectrum. 

For the full analysis on what the wall of maturities really means for the broad CRE market, download the full report.