The quarter's volumes

Commercial and multifamily mortgage originations rose 16% from the second quarter of 2025 and 12% from the first quarter of 2026, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association survey published August 6.

The sector breakdown is where the quarter's character shows. Retail originations were up 61% year over year, office up 47%, hotel up 19%, multifamily up 8% and industrial up 6%. Healthcare, down 19%, was the only category to decline.

The comparison base matters for reading those percentages. Office and retail lending had fallen furthest during the preceding downturn, so the largest percentage gains come off the lowest starting points.

Who is actually writing the loans

The investor-type breakdown is more revealing than the property-type one. Originations for commercial mortgage-backed securities conduits rose 68 percent year over year and those for depository institutions rose 61 percent. Investor-driven loans rose 18 percent.

Two categories fell. Loans originated for the government-sponsored enterprises were down 17 percent, and loans for life insurance companies were down 27 percent.

That split describes a market where the securitisation channel and bank balance sheets have reopened while the two most conservative sources of long-term capital have pulled back. Life companies lend against stabilised assets at low leverage and simply stop when spreads do not compensate them; the enterprises are constrained by annual multifamily volume caps set by their regulator. Neither retreat reflects a view about credit so much as a mandate about pricing and quantity.

Deceleration, not acceleration

The 16 percent figure reads as growth, but the series was growing faster before. The MBA reported commercial and multifamily borrowing up 52 percent year over year in the first quarter of 2026, 30 percent in the fourth quarter of 2025, 36 percent in the third quarter of 2025 and 66 percent in the second quarter of 2025. Full-year 2025 lending was up 40 percent.

Read in sequence, the second quarter of 2026 is the slowest year-over-year growth in more than a year. The sequential figures point the other way — industrial originations rose 38 percent from the first quarter, office 23 percent, multifamily 15 percent and retail 3 percent — but a decelerating annual rate on top of rising quarterly volume is what a recovery looks like as its base effect fades.

Reggie Booker, the association's associate vice president of commercial research, attributed the gains to improving capital markets and stronger transaction activity, and described the office rebound as renewed financing activity in a sector that has faced significant headwinds rather than as a full recovery.

Office lending at 47%

Analysis: a 47% year-over-year increase in office originations sits awkwardly beside CMBS data showing office delinquency at 12.00% in August. Both can be true, and the reconciliation is in which buildings are involved.

Lending volume concentrates in assets that lenders will finance — newer, well-leased, well-located buildings. Delinquency concentrates in the assets they will not. The office market's divide between quality tiers means aggregate figures for the sector describe two different markets averaged together.

A large share of commercial lending in any period is also refinancing rather than acquisition. Loans written in 2020 and 2021 at low rates are reaching maturity, and a refinancing that completes is recorded as an origination — activity driven by the maturity calendar as much as by appetite for new exposure.

Multifamily's modest number

Multifamily at 8% growth was among the weaker sectors, which is notable because apartments are the largest category of commercial mortgage debt and benefit from government-sponsored enterprise liquidity that other property types lack.

That relative weakness aligns with what apartment owners reported directly. The NMHC quarterly survey published in July put its debt financing index at 46 and equity financing at 44, both below the breakeven level, with sales volume at 46.

Taken together, the two sources describe a multifamily transaction market where capital is available but the terms have tightened enough to hold volumes near flat while other sectors rebound.

Reading the survey

The MBA survey measures originations by its member firms, which include the major commercial mortgage bankers but not every lender in the market. It is an index of reported volume rather than a complete census of commercial mortgage debt issuance.

Quarterly percentages in this series are volatile because individual large transactions can move a sector's total. A single billion-dollar financing is a rounding error in the residential market and a visible share of quarterly office volume.

Caveat: the release states percentage changes only. Estate Wire could not obtain absolute dollar volumes for the quarter from the published material and does not state any.

The direction across five of six sectors is nonetheless consistent, and it fits the broader 2026 record: property values stabilizing, as Green Street's all-property index rose 5.0% over the twelve months to August, while distress remains concentrated in specific assets rather than spread across the market.