The mid-year data is in from every major research platform. The headline reads recovery. The detail reads something more complicated and more useful for the people actually doing deals.
Here is what I took from the numbers across Altus Group, MSCI/RCA, CBRE, Avison Young, Matthews, Green Street, and LightBox — and what I think it means for capital deployment in the second half of this year.
The recovery that started in late 2024 has now strung together three consecutive quarters of near- or double-digit gains.
H1 2026 U.S. CRE investment sales: $233.6 billion — up 14.7% from $203.7 billion in H1 2025 and the strongest first half since 2022. Avison Young H1 2026 Investment Sales Report
Breaking it down by quarter:
Q1 2026 set a price record. The median CRE transaction price hit $129 per square foot — the twelfth consecutive quarter of price gains and the highest ever recorded across all property types tracked by Altus. Every one of the fifteen subtypes Altus monitors posted price gains both quarterly and annually. Storage led year-over-year at 22.9%, followed by automotive (14.0%) and warehouse/distribution (12.8%). Altus Group Q1 2026
Q2 2026 built on that momentum. Altus reported aggregate dollar volume up 11.3% quarter-over-quarter and trailing four-quarter volume up 16.3% year-over-year. MSCI/RCA put Q2 transaction volume at $113.7 billion, up 9% year-over-year — the third consecutive quarter of near- or double-digit gains. CBRE's figures put Q2 at $124.5 billion, up 15% year-over-year. Matthews' auction-market data came in at $136.6 billion in Q2, up 14% year-over-year, with H1 2026 totaling $279.3 billion. MSCI/Colliers Q2 2026 | CBRE Q2 Capital Markets | Matthews Q2 2026
Year-to-date, CBRE puts the cumulative figure at $250.3 billion, up 21%.
Annualized projection for full-year 2026: Avison Young forecasts H2 at $317 billion, bringing the annual total to $545 to $555 billion — approaching the pre-pandemic annual average and representing roughly 16% year-over-year growth if it closes that way. CBRE's official projection is a 16% increase in full-year investment activity.
Cross-border capital is back. CBRE logged a 35% year-over-year increase in cross-border investment in H1 to $14.4 billion, led by retail, hotel, and office — three sectors that would not have topped the foreign capital list two years ago.
Private buyers dominate. Of CBRE's Q2 volume, private investors accounted for the largest share at $70.9 billion. Institutional buyers followed at $22.4 billion. This is not an institutional-led recovery. It is private capital regaining conviction.
Entity-level deals are back. Three notable take-privates in Q2 alone — Veris Residential ($3.5B), ECHO Realty (TPG-led JV), and Peakstone Realty Trust — inflated headline figures. This matters because entity-level deals typically signal that large-scale investors believe pricing has bottomed and are willing to underwrite through uncertainty rather than wait for clarity.
Industrial led operational volume, with MSCI showing $32.5 billion in Q2 transactions, up 27% year-over-year. Altus put Industrial quarterly dollar-volume growth at 22.2% and year-over-year gains at 26.0%. The Plymouth Industrial REIT privatization contributed to the institutional narrative. MSCI via Colliers
The aggregate number masks substantial divergence beneath it.
Industrial: Volume up 27% year-over-year. But pricing turned negative — RCA CPPI for industrial is down 0.4% year-over-year, reversing its run as the pricing leader. Deal flow is healthy; cap rate expansion is the story.
Multifamily: Volume essentially flat at $36.7 billion. Individual asset sales fell 7%, the first decline after five consecutive quarters of growth. Garden apartments drove the weakness, down 21%. The Veris take-private propped up the headline. RCA CPPI for apartments down 1.7% year-over-year — two years of negative readings.
Office: $18.5 billion in Q2, down 9% year-over-year, though H1 was still up 14%. Suburban outperformed CBD. Pricing showing tentative stabilization with four consecutive quarters of year-over-year gains in the RCA CBD CPPI. Avison Young tracked office investment up 105.9% in H1 2026 — off a compressed base, but real velocity.
Retail: $18 billion, up 13%, though a single ECHO Realty deal drove most of it. Strip center and necessity retail fundamentals are quietly among the best in the market right now.
Data Centers: The outlier. Matthews reported data center volume up 1,806% year-over-year to $7.7 billion in Q2 alone — driven by a single portfolio transaction. This is not a representative data point for the sector broadly, but it reflects where institutional capital conviction is highest.
Hospitality: Volume up 27%, but RCA CPPI for hotels down 9.3% year-over-year — the steepest decline since 2024. Volume is moving; pricing is not cooperating.
The Green Street Commercial Property Price Index — which leads transaction-based indices by months because it uses REIT asset valuations rather than closed comps — has now posted a 5.0% gain over the past twelve months as of August 2026.
The monthly trajectory tells the story:
Green Street's commentary on June put it plainly: "Price gains have been modest because cap rates continue to be elevated." The July reading added: "Prices are up 5% over the past year. Rental income is doing the work."
That last line is the most honest characterization of the current recovery: it is an income-driven repair, not a cap-rate compression rally. NOI growth, not yield compression, is the engine. At 130.9 on the all-property index, the market still sits roughly 16% below its 2022 peak.
For buyers, this is still a real-return environment. For sellers who bought at 2021-2022 pricing, the math continues to be difficult. Green Street CPPI
The LightBox CRE Activity Index, which tracks commercial property listings, Phase I environmental site assessments, and lender-driven appraisals in near real-time, adds the on-the-ground behavioral layer that transaction volume data alone cannot provide.
The Index peaked at 129.4 in May 2026 — a four-year high — following a strong spring surge. It then pulled back to 122.5 in June and 110.7 in July, marking two consecutive months of decline and sitting 14% below the May peak.
The components tell a mixed story:
Perhaps the most important signal: LightBox's Transaction Tracker recorded 1,677 deals closing in June, up 16% from May. And buyers signed an average of 139 NDAs per listing in Q2, up from 133 in Q1 — across roughly 270,000 listings. Capital has not left the market. It has become more selective about where it deploys. LightBox July 2026
CBRE projects a 16% increase in full-year 2026 investment activity, expecting annual volume to approach $562 billion — close to the pre-pandemic average. Lending conditions remain disciplined: commercial LTVs averaged 59.6%, spreads narrowed 21 basis points year-over-year to 204 basis points, and mortgage rates edged down to 5.7%. Alternative lenders now capture 38% of non-agency loan closings, up from 34% a year ago.
Colliers / MSCI — Steig Seaward, Senior National Director of Research: "Investment momentum strengthened, but gains remained uneven across sectors and asset types."
LightBox: "The market may be more cautious, but it remains engaged. Fewer properties may be coming to market, but investors are still actively evaluating opportunities."
Avison Young revised its full-year outlook downward from its Q1 forecast to reflect shifting sentiment around the Fed funds rate trajectory — no rate cuts assumed in H2 2026 — settling on $545 to $555 billion as the full-year range.
The summer pullback in LightBox activity reflects real forces, not seasonal noise:
Renewed geopolitical tension has pushed oil toward $100 per barrel and the 10-year Treasury to 2026 highs. The Federal Reserve's July meeting signaled uncertainty around the rate path. A weaker-than-expected employment report followed. None of these individually would break the market. Together they have made underwriting harder and bid-ask spreads wider on deals that are not clean.
The Colliers/MSCI note on Treasury yields as of late August is pointed: elevated long-term yields are keeping cap rates elevated, compressing valuations on income properties and making it difficult for sellers who bought at 2021-2022 compressed yields to exit at acceptable prices.
The recovery is real. The volume is real. The trajectory is positive on a trailing 12-month basis across every major tracking platform. At the same time:
For buyers who can underwrite today's income environment without waiting for yield compression, the fundamentals support deployment. For sellers anchored to prior-cycle values, the data does not support that position today.
The market is functioning. It is demanding more discipline from everyone in it.
Sources: Altus Group Q2 2026 | MSCI/Colliers Q2 2026 | CBRE Q2 2026 Capital Markets | Avison Young H1 2026 | Matthews Q2 2026 | Green Street CPPI August 2026 | LightBox CRE Activity Index July 2026
Logan Freeman is Managing Broker at Midwest CRE Advisors, specializing in industrial, IOS, and CRE investment across Kansas, Missouri, and the broader Midwest. 573-694-9669 | mwcreadvisors.com
Copyright 2026, Midwest CRE Advisors
