Insights from SM Capital, Inc.

The Great Reset in commercial real estate isn't coming—it's here. As we enter 2026, the recalibration predicted eighteen months ago has materialized, transforming how we structure financing, underwrite deals, and evaluate opportunities across the CRE landscape.

The commercial real estate market is undergoing a profound structural reset — one driven not by systemic distress but by fundamentals, interest rate normalization, and heightened performance dispersion across sectors and geographies. The winners in this environment will be lenders and investors who can move quickly on smaller transactions in alternative asset classes, where pricing inefficiencies and limited competition create outsized risk-adjusted returns.

With approximately $3 trillion in CRE loans set to mature over the next five years—including $1.2 trillion in multifamily mortgages alone—we are witnessing a refinancing challenge and capital deployment opportunity of historic proportions.