Trepp CMBS delinquency rate rises 17 basis points to 8.02% in September

The Trepp CMBS delinquency rate rose 17 basis points to 8.02% in September 2026, its highest level since November 2020, and five large single-asset, single-borrower loans did much of the work, according to the September delinquency report—a group that includes three outright office buildings, a studio-and-office portfolio, and a beachfront hotel.

The five loans, as the report lists them:

Together the five carry roughly $2.29 billion of balance, the September increase in a single figure; an index moved by a short list of individually large assets behaves differently from one moved by a drift across thousands of smaller loans.

Four of the five major property types rose or held flat against that backdrop, with office climbing 16 basis points to 12.16%, the highest among the five, and lodging rising 34 basis points to 6.18%, both tied to the new loans above. Multifamily added 35 basis points to 8.04%, a hair above the all-property rate, while industrial held at 1.14% on limited newly delinquent volume and retail fell 62 basis points to 6.58% as mall loans cured.

Because the headline moved through single-asset, single-borrower deals—loans large enough that one or two defaults register on an index covering the whole CMBS universe—the aggregate rate is doing less work than usual this month: most of its move traces to a few office-heavy credits and one hotel rather than to conduit loans spread across the country.

Office and multifamily both sit near the top of the range, but their increases are not alike: the report attributes office's 16-basis-point climb to the four large loans above, each big enough to shift the index by itself, while multifamily's 35-basis-point rise came from a broad group of apartment loans crossing into 30-day delinquency across several states, with no single asset carrying the number. Office today is a story about specific borrowers and specific buildings; multifamily is closer to a story about a class of collateral.

The argument this publication has been running on the refinancing wall is that the wall is being rolled rather than repriced: extensions, preferred equity, and rescue capital keep most maturities out of delinquency, and only income-visible collateral clears. September is the other side of that ledger. Five loans, heavily office and hotel, reached delinquency anyway, and the report does not say whether they failed on cash flow, on refinancing, or on both. That gap matters. A loan that goes delinquent after a borrower cannot line up a takeout will behave differently from one that never had the income to service, and the two look identical in a delinquency rate.

Multifamily matters for the same reason in the opposite direction. The apartment maturity wall has been the market's testing ground for the rescue-capital thesis, and the 30-day bucket is its leading edge: loans that have missed a payment but have not yet been cured, extended, or liquidated. The report places a broad set of apartment loans across several states into that bucket, with no single asset carrying the number, and it does not say how they resolve from here. The next report will show whether they clear the way most of the wall has cleared so far—rolled with fresh capital rather than sold—or the 30-day tally is the first step toward something firmer.

The apartment repricing this publication has tracked, with marks clearing below replacement cost and below old bases while new owners underwrite a 2028-29 supply gap, depends on debt getting done on workable terms. Delinquency is the visible failure of that process, and it is distinct from the larger share of maturities that, in this market, have been extended rather than defaulted.

The two categories that did not deteriorate frame the range: industrial's 1.14%, unchanged, reflects limited newly delinquent volume—the weakest collateral is not the newest collateral—and retail's 62-basis-point decline to 6.58% came from mall cures, which subtract from a delinquency rate by definition and can move a category by more than a point when they arrive in a block. This publication has argued that retail's pricing has shifted to a scarcity question, with anchored assets and drive-through boxes commanding net-lease-like premiums while unanchored space reprices tenant by tenant; the delinquency line is consistent with a sector clearing its legacy distress while its new pricing is set elsewhere.

The apartment loans now sitting in the 30-day bucket are the ones to watch, because whether they cure, extend, or slide further into the report's heavier categories will say more about the state of the refinancing wall than the 8.02% headline does.