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<\/p>\nLenders are ready and willing to bet on office again \u2014 especially if it\u2019s in Manhattan. And as the nationwide rate of CMBS distress increases, owners of prime New York City office towers have emerged as the big winners of Wall Street’s return to the securitized mortgage market.<\/p>\n
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\n Courtesy of Tishman Speyer\/Laurian Ghinitoiu\n <\/p>\n
\n Terraces wrap around The Spiral, Tishman Speyer’s office tower on the Far West Side of Manhattan.\n <\/p>\n
CMBS lenders originated $115.2B of debt in the first 11 months of the year, the highest issuance since 2007, according to KBRA data<\/a>. That surpassed\u00a0last year’s total<\/a> of $108B and marked a\u00a0186% jump from 2023, when just $40B of CMBS loans were handed out nationwide.<\/p>\n New York City has captured an outsized share of the market, with $28B in CMBS debt alone tied to NYC properties, according to Trepp<\/a>\u00a0data provided to\u00a0Bisnow. Half of that total, $14B, was lent to 11 office assets.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been an epic year for CMBS in general, and the asset class back in particular is office,\u201d JLL<\/a> Managing Director of Capital Markets Lauren Kaufman said. \u201cThere’s a lot of excitement.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2021, the last year that CMBS lending in New York City eclipsed $20B, office loans accounted for just over half of all originations. But roughly two-thirds of 2025\u2019s CMBS issuance, $18.5B, was allocated to office, showing a market roaring back into high gear.<\/p>\n \u201cThe office recovery in New York City is front-running all the other office markets,\u201d Kaufman\u00a0said.<\/p>\n New York leads the nation in leasing volume, office utilization and market rents, and there is almost zero trophy office availability left in the city, all of which is driving lender enthusiasm, she added.<\/p>\n Tishman Speyer landed the biggest deal,\u00a0$2.85B for The Spiral<\/a>, followed by The Irvine Co.\u2019s $1.5B for\u00a0the MetLife Building<\/a>\u00a0and SL Green and PGIM\u2019s $1.4B deal\u00a0for 11 Madison<\/a>.<\/p>\n Nick Scribani, vice chair of Newmark<\/a>\u2019s debt and structured finance group, said 2025\u2019s CMBS volumes\u00a0have come in part\u00a0because recent\u00a0short-term extensions expired.\u00a0He was part of the team that arranged NYC\u2019s biggest multifamily CMBS loan of the year,\u00a0a $675M refinancing<\/a>\u00a0for Vornado and Stellar Management\u2019s 1,328-unit Independence Plaza apartment\u00a0complex in Tribeca.<\/p>\n \u201cYou just had a lot of deals that were on the sidelines because maybe they went through an extension or two,\u201d he said. \u201cA lot of it just meant that there was more product that was ready to go to market.\u201d<\/p>\n When brokers shopped for lenders, they found a more competitive lending environment than in recent years, Kaufman said.<\/p>\n She and her team at JLL marketed La Caisse\u2019s 3 Bryant Park to more than 100 banks, CMBS lenders, life insurance companies, and mezzanine and preferred equity lenders. The team ended up with 11 \u201cvery competitive\u201d single-asset, single-borrower offers before closing a $1.1B loan<\/a>, she said. The floating-rate debt was underwritten by Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Bank of Montreal in February.<\/p>\n \n Courtesy of C. Taylor Crothers\n <\/p>\n \n 3 Bryant Park netted a billion-dollar CMBS refinancing deal as lender appetite picks back up for best-in-class office buildings.\n <\/p>\n The deal was the ninth-largest of the year, according to Trepp, just behind Deutsche Bank Center’s $1.1B deal<\/a> from October.<\/p>\n Lending enthusiasm for office hasn\u2019t been limited just to NYC or to CMBS, brokers told Bisnow. Even standout buildings in otherwise lackluster office markets have scored competitive deals, like\u00a0the\u00a0$700M deal for Chicago’s Bank of America Tower<\/a>.<\/p>\n And if long-term Treasury yield levels hold steady as bank regulations continue to soften, borrowers will continue to field more competitive refinancing deals from banks as well as life insurance companies and CMBS lenders into 2026, Trepp Research Director\u00a0Stephen Buschbom<\/a>\u00a0said.<\/p>\n But\u00a0CMBS will likely end up having another banner year in 2026 \u2014\u00a0especially\u00a0in NYC office, where loan sizes are often much larger than a single bank can foot.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the end of the day, it comes down to the intersection of loan size, loan structure, and lender appetite and lender ability,\u201d he said. \u201cFor those megadeals, oftentimes the CMBS market continues to be the place where you can get the best execution.\u201d<\/p>\n The CMBS loans that have been handed out have gone to trophies like The Spiral or the Seagram Building. Older assets, which have struggled with entrenched vacancies and higher rates of distress, have yet to catch the momentum. But that might change next year.<\/p>\n \u201cI do think next year, in 2026, you’ll see a wider variety of office deals that are going to get done,\u201d Kaufman said.\u00a0<\/p>\n New York’s problems also don’t run as deep as other parts of the country \u2014\u00a0its CMBS delinquency rate was 5.8%\u00a0last month, down\u00a0from 6.9% at\u00a0the end of 2024, according to Trepp. The nationwide delinquency rate has risen over that same period, from 6.5% to 7.3%.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n