Commercial Real Estate in 2026: Key Issues and Outlooks

By Ed Finkel for Market Share Blog | January 5, 2026

Commercial real estate is showing clear signs of strength and resilience as 2026 begins, supported by improving conditions across many markets and asset classes, with some variations, according to an array of NAIOP board members. Among the issues on their minds are interest rates, availability of power generation and the costs of commercial insurance. Board members are split about whether office space is coming back post-COVID-19 pandemic or largely being converted to residential.

Commercial real estate in Houston has performed well, with debt more available than equity, said Ashley Grigsby, managing director, capital markets, for Transwestern in Houston. Grigsby spends most of her time financing ground-up development, particularly in multifamily and industrial, with a little boutique retail. “You have to be a little bit more creative in putting together your capital stacks” for equity, she said. “It’s very location specific, but debt is readily available.”

The availability of power has become a top-tier issue with the explosive growth of artificial intelligence data centers and development occurring generally in the region, Grigsby said, adding that colleagues in mortgage banking have told her that office and multifamily are leasing well. “Office seems to not be a dirty world, necessarily,” she says. “Houston is not a [residential] conversion market. That’s not a product you would see there.”

Some commercial real estate leaders are wondering what to expect with interest rates, Grigsby said. “There’s still a question mark with what the Fed is going to do. There’s not a lot of certainty there. Are the rates going to go down? I don’t know. Can we be comfortable with where they are today? Yes. Nobody thinks they’re going to go up.”

For industrial property in the Indianapolis region, 2025 started slowly but picked up nicely, said Abigail Sievers, senior vice president, industrial brokerage, for JLL. After record years during COVID-19, the sector plateaued for a while but has resumed its momentum, partly due to mega-retailers like Walmart and Amazon, along with the resurgence in reshoring of advanced manufacturing.

“We had so much spec development in those few [pandemic] years. It’s just now getting absorbed, which is fantastic,” she said. “The last two weeks have been insane. I’m getting calls multiple times a day, and we’re seeing a rise of 100-, 200- or 300-acre takedowns.”

One open question will be whether the power infrastructure continues to grow, especially given the proliferation of data centers. “Power is a big, big, big conversation right now,” Sievers said. “Manufacturers are saying, ‘Wait a second, we need 6,000 amps. Power companies and towns are saying, ‘Prove it.’ It’s tricky when developers go to build on spec. You can’t prove someone is going to use 6,000 amps. It’s chicken and egg; build it and they will come.”

The market for manufacturing, technology and R&D in the Pittsburgh area has been moving slowly but seems promising going forward, said Don Smith, president of RIDC, a nonprofit economic development corporation that owns and operates 8 million square feet of buildings across 12 counties in southwestern Pennsylvania.