Office Is the Visible Crisis. Multifamily Is the Hidden One.

Chart of the Week

A different lens on financial markets.

At AXIS, charts are not decoration. They are a way to make hidden forces visible. Each week, we select one chart that captures a structural trend, market imbalance or regime shift that investors may be underestimating. The goal is to combine data, context and point of view — not to explain what moved yesterday, but to understand what may shape markets over the years ahead.

Why This Chart Matters

Commercial real estate has largely disappeared from market conversations. Office vacancy remains an accepted problem, regional banks survived the 2023 panic, and credit spreads suggest little concern about a broader deterioration cycle.

Yet beneath the surface, the composition of CRE stress is changing. Office remains the headline story, but multifamily and construction loans increasingly represent the area where refinancing pressure, valuation declines and regional-bank concentration intersect. This chart tracks where delinquency rates are actually emerging rather than where investors are still looking.

Chart of the Week

CRE Stress Is No Longer Just an Office Story

Commercial real estate delinquency rates by property type, 2015–2025 (annual average, %)

Source: FDIC Quarterly Banking Profile (QBP); Trepp CMBS Delinquency Report; Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis FRED database (DRCRELEXFACBS)

Methodology: Delinquency rates represent annual averages of quarterly CMBS and bank CRE loan delinquency data. Office, Multifamily, Retail, and Industrial from Trepp CMBS series; Construction from FDIC QBP bank loan data. Values are approximate pending full quarterly verification.

Data & Methodology

This chart combines commercial real estate delinquency indicators from the FDIC Quarterly Banking Profile, Trepp CMBS delinquency data and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis FRED database.

Primary series	FDIC QBP · Trepp CMBS Delinquency Report · FRED
Reference series	DRCRELEXFACBS · Community bank CRE exposure · CMBS delinquency by property type
Coverage	Office · Multifamily · Retail · Construction · Industrial
Period	Q1 2015 – Q4 2025

The Reveal

The 2024–2026 wave of CRE maturities — approximately $2.5 trillion in loans originated at 2018–2021 rates — is hitting into a market where values are down materially and refinancing terms are punitive. Extend-and-pretend has bought two years. The maturity wall does not extend indefinitely.

The key point is not that office buildings remain weak. The key point is that refinancing mathematics have become structurally more difficult across multiple property categories at the same time that regional banks remain heavily exposed.

The AXIS View

Markets tend to focus on visible problems and ignore transmission mechanisms.

Office has become the visible problem. Multifamily refinancing pressure, construction exposure and regional-bank concentration remain transmission mechanisms.

The question is therefore not whether CRE remains weak. The question is where losses migrate next if higher-for-longer rates persist.

This follows a recurring AXIS theme. In The Price of Concentration , the risk was hidden inside market structure. In The Most Crowded Trade in History , it was hidden inside passive ownership. Here, it is hidden inside balance sheets that appear stable until refinancing forces recognition.