Answer extracted from The TreppWire Podcast: A Commercial Real Estate Show — listen to the full episode below.
How do refinance transactions compare to new sales originations in today's commercial real estate market?
Refinance transactions are occurring at approximately 7.5 times the volume of new origination on sales transactions. This reflects a market heavily weighted towards restructuring existing debt rather than sales-driven transactions, indicating where capital and borrower focus are concentrated in the current cycle.
A Market in Refinance Mode
The disproportionate ratio between refinance and new sales activity reveals a critical market dynamic: borrowers and lenders are prioritizing the restructuring of maturing debt over pursuing new property acquisitions. When Trep's team examined the data, this 7.5x ratio illustrated how constrained transaction volume has become relative to the pressing need to address debt coming due.
The context matters: with median coupon rates at 6.44% for refinancings year-to-date in 2026, borrowers face significantly higher costs to extend their debt. Many are forced into refinancing simply to avoid default, rather than choosing to refinance strategically. This pushes new sales activity to the margins of the market.
As Stephen Bushbaum explains in the episode, the relationship between these two activities speaks to deeper market synchronization: when maturity events force borrowers to refinance, pricing and conditions shift in ways that suppress new deal formation. Capital that might have funded acquisitions is diverted to managing existing exposure.
"Maturity is the great synchronization event that forces all of these clocks to come into sync."
Stephen Bushbaum — Head of Applied Research and Analytics, Trep. Bushbaum develops analytical frameworks to understand commercial real estate market dynamics, including the three-clock system (property, capital, and credit clocks) that reveals how different market signals synchronize during periods of debt stress and maturity events in the commercial real estate cycle.
The 7.5x ratio is not merely a statistical quirk—it signals structural constraint. Investors looking at the market would do well to understand that the volume skew toward refinancing will persist as long as maturities remain elevated and maturity events continue to dominate market dynamics, a topic explored in depth across the full episode and data analysis.
See also
How does New York office loan volume compare to the entire Western U.S. market?
New York represents 43% of the overall CMBS office outstanding loan volume, which is 1.8 times the entire Western U.S. market combined. This demonstrates the concentration of office risk in a single market.
What percentage of Western office properties have below 80% occupancy?
32.7% of properties in the Western office market have below 80% occupancy. This metric reflects significant strain in the regional office sector despite some recovery signals in specific markets.
How much commercial real estate debt faces extreme wildfire-related insurance pressure in Western states?
Approximately $1.4 trillion worth of outstanding mortgage debt has extreme wildfire or other extreme weather event-related insurance pressure. This represents a substantial systemic risk in the Western commercial real estate market.