The first half of 2026 opened with a soft-landing story and closed with reignited inflation, sub-2% growth, and a hawkish Fed. In this midyear episode of CRE Exchange, Cole Perry and Omar Eltorai work through what did happen: four straight Fed holds, consumer confidence at its lowest in the survey&#x27;s 70-plus year history, and a frozen housing market. Omar follows with the public markets story, where REITs returned nearly 14%, and REIT M&amp;A is on pace for its most active year in a decade, even as private CRE remained in a gradual recovery mode. The episode closes with original Altus Group research on implied versus realized growth in CRE: when buyers price in growth at acquisition, does that growth actually materialize? And does it protect value? Key moments: 01:29 Midyear economy recap 02:08 Growth and inflation shocks 04:06 Consumer and labor check 06:56 Housing and construction trends 08:30 Fed holds and rate reality 10:14 Public markets snapshot 11:50 Credit and data center capital 14:12 Rates macro and REIT rally 19:04 Fresh labor and construction prints 23:22 Implied vs realized growth research 29:41 How to access our in-depth research

Midyear CRE recap: Growth, inflation, and the exit bet

CRE Exchange: Commercial Real Estate, Property Valuations, Real Estate Analytics and Property Tax

Welcome to the CRE Exchange Podcast, where we deep dive into the global trends and challenges of professionals across all sectors of the commercial real estate industry. We engage with experts in this space to bring you innovative insights into industry practices, opportunities, and challenges to better inform your decisions. This episode is brought to you by Altus Group, a leading provider of CRE intelligence. We connect data, analytics, applications, and expertise to power CRE

performance. Welcome, everyone, to another exciting episode of the CRE Exchange. I'm Cole Perry, your host and associate director of research at Altus Group. I'm joined by Omar El-Taray, our senior director of research. Together, we'll share the latest news and trends in the U.S. commercial real estate market. Omar, it's great to be with you. Got a lot to talk about today, so why don't you run us through our agenda? Certainly, given that it is the mid-year, we'll be looking back on the economy and public markets before we dive into some of the more

recent econ releases on labor and construction spending. And then we'll wrap up this episode with some original research on the implied versus realized growth that CRE investors bake into their purchase prices. But before we get into that, I'll hand it back to you to cover the first half economy recap.

All right. I'm kicking us off today with a look back at the first half of 26 by the numbers, and then I'll hand it over to you for the market side. So the short version here is that we opened on a soft landing story. We had some rate cuts penciled in and then closed with reignited inflation, a Fed that had stopped cutting, and borrowing costs that did not come down.

Midyear CRE recap: Growth, inflation, and the exit bet

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.

Midyear CRE recap: Growth, inflation, and the exit bet

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast, not the earnings call.

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.