September CMBS Maturities Carry Higher Refinance Risk

September brings a smaller private-label CMBS maturity cohort but a weaker refinance profile. Trepp’s September hard-maturity analysis puts $2.74B across 109 loan pieces and 100 whole loans. That is down from $5.49B in August. Yet 26.96% of the balance has a current debt yield below 6%, compared with 18.13% last month. Trepp classifies that range as severely impaired for refinancing.

Refinance Risk Rises

Most of the September balance is still current. Performing loans account for $2.65B, or 96.4% of the cohort, while $98.7M is non-performing. The larger forward risk sits inside loans that have not yet defaulted. Trepp found that 93.05% of the severely impaired balance is still performing ahead of maturity.

Half of the September cohort has a debt yield below 8%. The share below 6% is 26.96%, and 26.22% of the total balance is already in special servicing. Trepp’s broader 2026 analysis identified $76.6B of hard maturities for the year, with 39% scheduled for Q4. It also found 36% of that annual balance at or below an 8% debt yield.

Hard maturities have no remaining contractual extension options. If a loan is still outstanding when that date arrives, the borrower must repay it or negotiate directly with the lender. Trepp excludes loans already past maturity or in foreclosure or REO, keeping the analysis focused on new refinance and resolution risk.

Retail Carries the Sharpest Impairment

Retail represents $719.64M, or 26.22%, of September hard maturities. Its debt-yield profile is the most severe. A full 58.56% of retail balance sits below both the 8% and 6% thresholds. Two loans account for $375M of the $421.4M impaired retail balance.

One is a New York single-asset, single-borrower retail loan with a 4.86% debt yield. The other is a super-regional mall split across three loan pieces at a 5.69% debt yield. Both remain current and neither is in special servicing, leaving maturity as the key test.

September’s broader 2026 CMBS maturity wall is increasingly defined by refinance math rather than existing delinquency.

Office Risk Is Broader but Shallower

Office is the largest property type in the cohort at $1.48B, or 53.82% of the total. It also accounts for 74.94% of all special-servicing balance. Still, office impairment is less severe than retail’s. About 45.67% of office balance is below an 8% debt yield, but only 14.21% falls below 6%.

Trepp says that spread leaves more office loans in a range where a borrower paydown could support a clean refinancing. The four non-performing loan pieces span three whole loans and three sectors. They include two pari passu office pieces totaling $47.3M, a $44.5M hospitality loan, and a $6.9M retail loan.

Smaller Cohort Spreads the Exposure

September is also less concentrated than August. The five largest maturities total $1.02B, or 37% of the cohort, down from 52.65% last month. Two of those five are 2021-vintage floating-rate SASB loans that exhausted extension options. Both remain current but face resolution decisions this month.

Non-performing balance declined from $136.6M in August to $98.7M in September. Its share still rose from 2.49% to 3.6% because the overall cohort shrank. Special-servicing balance fell to $719.5M from $1.38B, while its share edged up to 26.22% from 25.17%.

Why It Matters

The most important risk is not today’s delinquency count. It is the $688.3M of severely impaired balance that remains current before hard maturity. Those loans have no contractual extension options left. If they cannot repay or refinance, borrowers and lenders must negotiate a resolution.

September therefore combines a smaller maturity month with more difficult refinance math. Retail has the deepest debt-yield impairment, office carries most special servicing, and performing loans remain the largest potential source of new distress.