Commercial Real Estate Investment Conference Podcast (CREIC)

Small-bay industrial is outperforming multifamily on vacancy, tenant stickiness, and supply constraints. 

We look at why the asset class is working, why you can't build more of it, and what that means for capital allocators in late 2026. Key data points: - Small-bay vacancy around 4% vs. 7.5% for larger industrial - Sub-50K SF buildings trade at a 36% pricing premium - 80% of industrial leasing is for spaces under 50K SF - Only 7% of new construction is under 50K SF - Pipeline down 61% from 2022 peak - 83% of existing small-bay stock built before 2000 - Multifamily: Austin -2.8%, Denver -2%, Tampa -1.8%, Phoenix -1.6% YoY

National multifamily rent hit $1,773 in August 2026, up $2 month-over-month and marking the first monthly increase in years, but the headline masks a much bigger story.

Strongest year-over-year rent growth is coming from gateway and Midwest markets: San Francisco +6.1%, New York City +5.3%, Kansas City +3.0%, Chicago +2.6%.

Sun Belt markets are still fighting through oversupply: Austin -2.8%, Denver -2.0%, Tampa -1.8%, Houston -1.7%, Phoenix -1.6%.

The key differentiator is lease-up inventory. Nationally, units in lease-up fell from a 1.4M peak in early 2025 to 1.2M. Markets with minimal new supply are tightening fast: Detroit 2.1%, Baltimore 2.4%, Chicago 2.5%, San Francisco 3.0% lease-up share.

High lease-up markets remain under pressure: Charlotte 11.6%, Austin 11%, Phoenix 9.8%.

National occupancy is holding at 94.2%. Austin's lease-up share dropped from 18.3% in mid-2025 to roughly 11% in August 2026 as the supply wave burns off.

The recovery is already happening. It is just not happening evenly.

The maturity wall in Dallas-Fort Worth multifamily is hitting hard in 2026. 

173 DFW properties have debt maturing this year. Owners who refinanced or bought at 3-4% rates are now facing 7-8% refi rates. The cash flow math breaks for many. Over $2 billion in multifamily debt matures in the second half of 2026 alone. 

Lenders are getting selective about which assets they'll finance. Some owners are selling at 15-20% discounts to 2022 valuations. Some are doing recaps. Some are trying to extend, but the window is closing fast. This is the real test: which operators have the staying power? This is the moment.

DFW was the poster child for oversupply. Record deliveries. Rents tanking, but the market is rebalancing. 

Supply and demand just met for the first time since 2021. Supply peaked at 44K units in 2024, dropped to 31K in 2025, projected at 21-23K in 2026. Down 50% from peak. H1 2026, DFW absorbed 25K units. Q2 alone absorbed 12K while only 6K delivered. Why? Population growth. 100K new residents last year. 339 per day. 41-50K jobs annually. At equilibrium around 23K units per year, the dynamic flips. Occupancy hit 93.8%, up 60 bps. Rents still down 2.6% YoY but turned positive quarter-over-quarter. Full-year rent growth projected at 1.8%. Cap rates averaging 5.25%. Class A at 4-5.2%, Class B at 5.5-6.3%, Class C at 6.5-7.5%. Clear bifurcation. Transaction volume recovering. Q2 sales hit 2.27billion.The risk is the maturity wall. 2 billion-plus in multifamily debt due in H2 2026 alone. Owners facing refinancings at 7-8% when they bought at 3-4%. Some won't work. Assets get recapitalized or sold.

The core demand story is sound. DFW adds 100K people per year. Rent versus buy favors renting. The play is bifurcated. Core trophy Class A in Uptown, Oak Lawn, Park Cities attracts capital. Value-add in Class B/C suburbs at 6.5-7.5% cap rates spreads if vacancy tightens and rents climb to 2-3% growth in 2027. DFW is a template for market rebalancing. The maturity wall creates opportunity. Assets in stress get picked up by sponsors with capital. It'll be a repricing, not a bloodbath. Markets that add population and jobs can absorb supply. DFW waited. Now they're on the other side.

Data center demand doubled in the first half of 2026. Twenty-five gigawatts of net absorption. 

That's more electricity than Germany consumes in a year. And 77% of the 66 gigawatt North American construction pipeline is shifting to frontier markets: Texas, Ohio, Louisiana, the Carolinas. Why? Power. Grid interconnection queues in traditional hubs like Northern Virginia stretch 4-6 years. Hyperscalers can't wait. So they're moving to markets where they can generate power themselves. Behind-the-meter gas turbines, solar arrays, small modular reactors. Texas alone is building toward 26 GW of capacity. West Texas especially becomes the center of the AI economy. 95% of the North American pipeline is already pre-leased before delivery. Hyperscalers are locking down capacity for 2028 and 2029 because supply is non-existent. Vacancy is one percent. And they're doing it because capex spending hit $660 billion in 2026, triple what it was a few years ago. The spike is AI. These companies need compute immediately. 

Europe is reordering away from Frankfurt and Amsterdam. Latin America is explosive. Querétaro, Mexico up 450% in a single year. Asia shifting toward Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia. Middle East building 13.8 GW in planned pipeline. The risk: 40% of projects face delays from power approval or permitting issues. You can have the tenant and the site but you're waiting years for grid interconnection or transformer availability. But demand keeps accelerating. Data center power consumption goes from 415 terawatt-hours now to 945 by 2030. Data centers alone could represent 14% of total U.S. power demand by 2030. The investment thesis is simple: frontier markets with power. Land with generation potential in West Texas, Ohio, the Carolinas. That's the real estate goldmine this decade. Power-first site selection wins.

One point six billion dollars in Los Angeles suburban office CMBS loans face a hidden timing problem.

The largest tenant's lease expires before the loan matures. That's a refinancing calculation nobody sees until it's too late. This episode breaks down the Trepp data on 46% of suburban LA office balances sitting on a lease expiration calendar. When Activision leaves 5454 Beethoven Street one month before the $33M loan matures, or when Princess Cruises fully exits Valencia properties, the refinance models that looked solid three months earlier suddenly collapse. Urban office already taught us this lesson. Wilshire Courtyard, One California Plaza, EY Plaza all show what happens when tenant exits precede refinancing deadlines. Suburban office hasn't repriced this risk yet because occupancy metrics still look healthy at 93% median. 46% of the suburban book is on borrowed time. Over the next 24 months, as renewal decisions roll in, watch for a wave of suburban office loans moving into special servicing. Different cause from urban. Same outcome.

Ten point seven billion dollars in performing office loans with debt service coverage ratios below 1.00x are approaching hard maturity by 2029. The real pressure point is 2028, when four point five billion across thirty six loans hit contractual deadlines with zero extension options remaining. This episode breaks down the refinancing math that's broken for office, the geographic concentration of distress in gateway markets like San Francisco and Chicago, and what borrowers actually need to do between now and their maturity date. It's not an office apocalypse. It's a repricing moment. But the window is closing fast.

The next wave of apartment supply is shifting. New York and Los Angeles are leading permits while the Sun Belt cools. We break down what it means for operators, capital, and anyone still underwriting the 2021 playbook. Data from the last 12 months shows New York up 48 percent, Los Angeles up 98 percent, and Austin, Dallas, Houston, and Miami pulling back. The development map is being redrawn and the winners are moving first.

The American household is rerouting its spending, not collapsing it.

What happened: 
• Core retail sales fell 0.2% in July, the first monthly decline of 2026. 
• Online spending dropped 2.3%, the largest monthly decline since January 2025. 
• Apparel sales rose 1.9% and off-price retailers signed 100+ leases totaling roughly 3M SF over the past 12 months. 
• Dollar Tree traffic climbed 4.8% year over year in July. Dollar General traffic rose 1.9%. 
• On-time rent payments for independently owned units hit 83.2% in August, the strongest annual gain since May 2023. 
• The full-payment forecast reached 95.7%. Multifamily led the rebound at 82.5% on-time payments. 

What it means: 
• Renters are paying rent first, then cutting discretionary spending. 
• The consumer is not broke. The consumer is prioritizing. 
• Landlords are not underwriting a payment crisis. They are underwriting a household budget reshuffle. 
• Capital will flow to the assets households protect when budgets tighten: workforce housing, grocery-anchored retail, and discount retail. 

The takeaway: 
• The things households cut get repriced first. The things they protect keep pricing power. 

The question is whether your portfolio is on the right side of the reroute.

Tait Duryea joins Adam, Cam, and Vanessa to break down a fractured, lopsided economy, why the Fed is flying blind, and how he built a diversified private equity firm without syndicating a single deal. Talk on energy, tax strategy, and why relationships beat AI, every time.

Timestamps

00:00 Intro & Why Tait Is Built Different
 01:21 Cam on the Throwback Dynamic
 02:35 Tait Unpacks the Turbine Origin Story
 03:26 The Macro: "Crashing Up," Fed Chaos, and the Tale of Two Economies
 06:37 The Three Pillars: CRE, Private Credit, and Waypoint Energy
 09:16 Why a Diversified Menu Beats a Single Asset Class
 12:02 The Five Core Values That Run the Firm
 16:20 "Keep AI Off the Customer"
 18:22 Natural Gas, Data Centers, and the Next Energy Play
 19:00 The Oil & Gas Tax Hack Most Investors Miss
 20:17 The Colorado Shareholder Event Invite
 20:50 Tait's Final Words & See You in the Room

Resources

• Free Oil & Gas Tax Guide: turbinecap.com/ebook
• Turbine Capital: turbinecap.com
• See Tait speak live at our event