62 Global Real Estate Insiders on a Market That Turned Mid-Year — and What They Did Next
Bisnow · 30 June 2026
TL;DR
US commercial real estate (CRE) opened 2026 with its strongest quarter since before the rate shock — $113 billion in transaction volume — before a US-Iran conflict pushed the 10-year Treasury above 4.5% in May and sent CRE sales down 33% year-on-year in April. Bisnow surveyed 62 industry insiders across 30-plus markets at the midpoint of 2026. The verdict: most are still moving, but selectively and on tighter terms. Affordable housing, workforce housing, and distressed assets are drawing cautious capital. Office and build-to-rent players are restructuring deal terms to avoid bridge debt. Almost everyone agrees that waiting for rate cuts is not a business strategy — but the deals getting done are narrower, slower, and harder than anyone planned for at the start of the year.
Our take
For South African property professionals, this US midyear reckoning carries a familiar ring. Local investors have navigated their own version of this story — elevated interest rates, load-shedding drag on construction timelines, and a Reserve Bank that has moved cautiously on cuts. The global signal here is that rate relief is not arriving on anyone's preferred schedule, and the professionals still transacting have stopped waiting for it. For SA landlords and buy-to-let investors, the lesson is structural: deals need to work at current prime-linked rates, not projected ones. The insiders moving right now are doing so in sectors with genuine demand — affordable housing, workforce rentals — not speculative plays. That maps neatly onto SA's own undersupply crisis in affordable residential stock in cities like Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Gqeberha. For SA agents and developers, the distressed-asset angle is worth watching. As commercial property owners face refinancing pressure locally, acquisition opportunities may emerge for well-capitalised buyers. The broader takeaway: discipline, shorter debt maturities, and fundamentals-first underwriting are what separate active players from those simply waiting for a market that may not return in its old form.