The quarter's volume
CBRE's second-quarter 2026 net lease investment figures, dated August 3, put total US net-lease investment volume at $12.8 billion, 13% higher than a year earlier and accounting for 10% of all commercial real estate investment in the period.
On a trailing twelve-month basis through the second quarter, volume reached $57 billion, up 14% year over year.
Net lease describes single-tenant assets where the occupier carries most or all of the property costs, making the investment closer to a corporate credit exposure with a building attached than to conventional landlording. It is the segment where institutional and private capital compete most directly.
The composition shifted sharply
Industrial net-lease investment reached $8.1 billion, up 28% from a year earlier on stronger single-asset sales. Retail was $2.9 billion, up 6%. Office fell 21% to $1.8 billion.
Those movements changed the shape of the market within a single year. Industrial rose to 63% of net-lease volume from 56%, office fell to 14% from 20%, and retail eased to 22% from 24%.
Analysis: in a net-lease transaction the buyer is underwriting the tenant's ability to pay for ten or twenty years. A seven-point swing toward industrial in twelve months is therefore a statement about which long-term corporate occupiers investors are willing to underwrite, not simply about which buildings were available.
Pricing barely moved
The average net-lease cap rate held at 6.9%. The ten-year Treasury averaged 4.5% in the quarter, against 4.4% a year earlier, narrowing the spread to 241 basis points, ten basis points tighter year over year.
A stable cap rate against a slightly higher risk-free rate means buyers accepted marginally thinner compensation for property risk than they did in 2025 — a small move, but in the direction of more confidence rather than less.
A separate reading from the Boulder Group's second-quarter net lease report, built from asking prices rather than closed trades, put the overall single-tenant asking cap rate at 6.82%, two basis points higher than the prior quarter, with retail at 6.60%, office at 7.90% and industrial at 7.25%. Properties on the market rose 12.5% quarter over quarter to about 5,795, driven by a 16.2% jump in retail listings.
Two datasets, two different questions
CBRE measures completed transactions; Boulder Group measures what sellers are asking. Those are not competing estimates of the same quantity, and the small gap between 6.9% and 6.82% should not be read as either confirming the other.
The listings figure is the one carrying forward information. A 16% quarterly increase in retail net-lease properties offered, against retail volume growth of only 6%, means more product arriving than clearing — the kind of imbalance that pressures pricing in later quarters if it persists.
For context on the rate environment behind these numbers, the federal funds target range stood at 3.50% to 3.75% through the spring meetings of 2026. CBRE does not detail the denominator behind its 10%-of-all-CRE-investment share, so that proportion is best treated as indicative.