Florida's commercial real estate debt reckoning: where the distress is, and where it isn't

By Renan Serretiello and Christopher Taddei, founding partners of The List, Orlando, Florida. Part 3 of the Florida CRE series.

The short version

• Florida's securitized loans are among the cleanest in the country. Orlando's CMBS distress rate sits around 3%, against 11.6% across the 50 largest U.S. markets.
• The national story is office. Florida's story is apartments. Floating-rate multifamily bought in 2021 and 2022 is where Florida's biggest blowups are happening.
• Florida's office distress is old and downtown. Two Miami towers bought for $56.7 million in 2022 with a $58.3 million loan went to auction this summer with a $65.7 million judgment.
• The maturity wall is shrinking, but lenders stopped extending. $875 billion matures nationally in 2026 and $652 billion in 2027.
• Distress gets bought through five doors. Notes, foreclosure auctions, receivership sales, bankruptcy sales and rescue capital, each with Florida-specific rules and timelines.
• Florida adds friction you have to price. Deed stamps, note stamps and intangible tax can add well over 1% to a distressed deal before the first repair.

Every commercial property owner knows the phone call. The loan matures in nine months, the lender's new term sheet assumes today's rates, and the math that worked in 2021 doesn't work anymore. In part one of this series, we showed how the Fed's September hike pushed the 10-year Treasury back to about 5%. This report follows that money to where it breaks.

There are two groups of people who want this information. Owners who are quietly worried about a maturity date, and buyers who've been waiting three years for the "wave of distress" everyone promised. We'll be straight with both of you: in Florida, the wave is real but narrow, it's mostly not where the headlines point, and the discounts go to people who understand how Florida's legal process actually works.

The national picture in one chart

Distress in commercial mortgage-backed securities is the best public window into commercial real estate credit, because every loan reports monthly. And that window is not pretty. Trepp's overall CMBS special servicing rate rose to 11.42% in August, its highest level since February 2013, while the delinquency rate held at 7.85%. [1] CRED iQ, which tracks a broader "distress" measure that combines delinquency and special servicing, puts it this way:

Dark green bars are multifamily and the rate across all property types; light green bars are the other property types. Distress includes loans that are delinquent, in special servicing, or both. Source: CRED iQ analysis of the 50 largest CMBS markets, published August 2026. [2]

Two things jump out. Office is still the biggest source of trouble, with about half of all distressed balance nationally, and CRED iQ found that about 71% of distressed office balance is tied to failed or imminent refinancing rather than missed monthly payments. [3] In other words, the office buildings aren't failing because tenants stopped paying. They're failing at the maturity date, when the new loan is smaller than the old one.

The second thing is the dark green multifamily bar. Multifamily distress more than doubled in five months, from 6% to 13%, and roughly 96% of the balance that became newly distressed in July was apartments. [2] Hold that thought. It's the most important number in this report for Florida.

Florida isn't where the fire is

Here's the part that surprises investors who've been waiting for a Florida fire sale. When you sort the country's biggest CMBS markets by distress, Florida sits near the bottom of the list.

Dark green bars are Orlando and the average of the 50 largest markets; light green bars are other selected large metros. The Orlando bar is plotted at 3%; it is reported as "around 3%." Source: CRED iQ analysis of the 50 largest CMBS markets, published August 2026. [2] Miami was reported below 10% in CRED iQ's April 2026 analysis. [4] Metro rankings can swing on a single large loan.

Orlando sits around 3%, alongside Phoenix, Boston and Las Vegas, while the Midwest's ten large metros average 22.7%. [2] Miami, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix and Atlanta were all below 10% in April, a resilience CRED iQ attributes to population growth and stronger absorption. [4] The same fundamentals we covered in part one show up in the loan data: tight retail, record office rents at the top, and industrial that's absorbing its supply.

The maturity wall, and who's holding it

The Mortgage Bankers Association's annual maturity survey is the closest thing the industry has to a calendar of reckonings. [6]

The wall is getting shorter, and the MBA's economists read that as the market moving past the peak. But they also flagged the change that matters most for owners: lenders were no longer simply extending loan terms. [6] "Extend and pretend" is over. Morningstar DBRS, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, found that more than half of the roughly $100 billion in securitized commercial mortgages coming due in 2026 were unlikely to pay off at maturity, roughly double the non-payoff share of prior years. [7]

The dark green bar is the lender group with the largest share of its book maturing. "Debt funds and others" is MBA's category for credit companies, warehouse lines and other lenders. Source: Mortgage Bankers Association, 2025 Commercial Real Estate Survey of Loan Maturity Volumes, February 2026. [6]

Look at the dark green bar. Non-bank lenders have the highest share of their books coming due, 29%. [6] That's the category that includes many of the debt funds and bridge lenders behind Sunbelt apartment acquisitions in 2021 and 2022, on short-term, floating-rate loans designed to be refinanced into cheap permanent debt that never showed up. Which brings us to Florida's real distress story.

Florida's real distress story: the 2021 apartment loan

The recipe was the same all over Florida. Buy a 1980s or 1990s garden apartment complex at a record price in 2021 or 2022. Finance it with a floating-rate bridge loan and a rate cap that expires in two or three years. Underwrite big rent bumps from light renovations. Then watch rates double, the rate cap expire, insurance premiums jump, property taxes reset to the purchase price, and rent growth go flat as the supply wave we described in part one arrived.

The most dramatic example in Florida is the collapse of Lurin Capital. Here's the trail from court filings and press reports:

Sources: The Real Deal; [8] Bay News 9; [9] court filings summarized by Elevenflo. [10] Allegations in lawsuits are claims, not findings.

It isn't just one sponsor. In July, a $61 million loan on the Ariza Forest View apartments in Santa Rosa Beach went newly delinquent, [2] and an Ardent Companies affiliate filed to foreclose on the 432-unit X Tampa project downtown after its loan matured in February. [11] (Keep Ardent's name in mind. It shows up again in the next section.)

Anatomy of a Florida office foreclosure

Miami has the tightest major office market in the country by some measures, and record Class A rents. It also has this.

In 2016, a New York investor bought two older office buildings in downtown Miami, the 25-story Courthouse Tower at 44 West Flagler Street and a 12-story building at 200 Southeast First Street, for a combined $61.35 million. [12] [13] In 2022, a Boca Raton-based partnership bought both for $56.7 million, financed by a mortgage of up to $58.3 million from Atlanta-based Ardent Companies. [14] The loan matured on June 1, 2024 without being repaid, and the lender also alleged $1.2 million in unpaid 2023 property taxes. [14] In June 2026, a Miami-Dade judge entered a $65.7 million foreclosure judgment, and the buildings went to online auction on July 20. [15]

44 W. Flagler St. and 200 SE First St., Miami, millions of dollars. Light green bars are sale prices; dark green bars are the loan, the unpaid principal and the judgment. Sources: GlobeSt and High-Rise Facilities (2016 sales); [12] [13] The Real Deal (2022 purchase, loan and taxes); [14] Connect CRE, citing the South Florida Business Journal (judgment and auction). [15] The foreclosure complaint cited a $49.4 million mortgage balance; principal at judgment was $41.1 million.

Four lessons in one chart:

• The loan was bigger than the price. A mortgage of up to $58.3 million on a $56.7 million purchase left no cushion for anything to go wrong. In 2022, that kind of leverage was available. In 2026, it's how you lose a building.
• Old downtown office had already repriced once. The 2022 buyers paid about 8% less than the 2016 buyers, in nominal dollars, six years later. That's a market telling you something.
• Default is expensive. Interest, default interest and fees added $24.6 million, roughly 60% on top of the unpaid principal, while the case worked through court. [14] [15]
• The fine print matters. The 200 SE First Street building sits on a ground lease that dates to 1956 and runs to 2055, which shapes what any buyer can finance and build. [16] And according to the lawsuit, the owners had already fallen behind on property taxes before the loan matured. That's an early warning sign we'll come back to.

Contrast that with the Miami office market we described in part one, where Class A asking rents hit records. Both are true. The distress in Florida office is in older buildings with the wrong capital structure, not in the market as a whole. For more on the office side, see our Orlando office market analysis.

Hotels: the quiet one

Lodging distress runs at 10.6% nationally, [2] and Florida has been the Southeast's epicenter. By mid-2025, 42 Florida hotels were in CMBS special servicing, far more than Georgia's 22, with nine in Orlando alone, and midscale and upscale hotels made up more than 75% of the distressed properties. [17] The squeeze is familiar: labor, insurance and operating costs rising faster than room rates for price-sensitive travelers. The trophy resorts get the headlines. The distress sits in the select-service and midscale hotels along the interstates. Our Orlando hospitality analysis covers the market in more depth.

Five doors to Florida distress, and what's behind each

Distressed property rarely shows up on a listing site with a "discount" sticker. It moves through a handful of channels, and Florida's legal system shapes each one.

Sources: Shumaker (foreclosure timeline); [18] The Florida Bar Business Law Section and Adams and Reese (receivership act). [19] [20]

A few Florida specifics are worth underlining. Every foreclosure goes through court, and law firm Shumaker puts a typical uncontested commercial case at roughly 8 to 14 months from default to sale, with contested cases running longer. [18] That's why receiverships have become so common here. Florida's Uniform Commercial Real Estate Receivership Act, in effect since July 1, 2020, gives state courts bankruptcy-like tools, and a receiver can, in the right circumstances and with court approval, sell before judgment and free and clear of liens. [19] [20] For buyers, that means some of the best-priced Florida distress trades through a receiver, not at the courthouse auction.

Bankruptcy sales are the other big channel right now. In the Lurin case, one property, Fitzroy Grove, was lined up for a $50 million stalking-horse sale with an auction and sale hearing scheduled for August. [10] Stalking-horse deals set the floor. Other bidders then have to beat it, plus any break-up fee.

Florida's friction costs: price them before you bid

Florida taxes the paperwork. On a distressed deal, where every dollar of discount matters, these costs belong in the bid, not the closing statement surprise.

Sources: Florida Department of Revenue; [21] Barnes Walker. [22] By Florida custom, sellers usually pay deed stamps and buyers pay the mortgage taxes, but in distressed deals everything is negotiable.

Two details distressed buyers miss. First, deeds in lieu of foreclosure are specifically listed as taxable documents, so a lender taking a property back by deed doesn't escape the stamp tax. [21] Second, in Miami-Dade, the surtax makes commercial transfers 50% more expensive than in the rest of the state. On a large deal, that's real money.

For owner-users picking up distressed small office, flex or retail buildings, the financing side has a bright spot: SBA 504 loans were pricing around 6.54% on a 25-year fixed rate in September 2026, [23] fixed for far longer than most conventional commercial loans available today.

Early warning signs

Whether you own, lend or hunt for deals, these are the signals that tend to show up months before a default:

• A maturity inside 12 to 24 months on a loan written in 2021 or 2022. That's where most distress now starts, not with missed payments. [3]
• Debt service coverage trending below 1.20x. Shumaker advises lenders to flag loans at that level for immediate outreach. [18]
• Insurance nonrenewals or premium jumps above 20% to 25% in a year, a Florida-specific trigger that can also breach loan covenants. [18]
• Unpaid property taxes. In the Miami case above, the lender cited $1.2 million in unpaid 2023 property taxes alongside the maturity default. [14] Tax delinquency is public record in Florida.
• Expiring rate caps on floating-rate bridge loans. When the cap expires, the owner must buy a new one at today's price or default on the loan terms.

What we'd actually do with this

If you own property with a loan maturing before 2028

Call your lender early, while you still have options. Lenders are no longer defaulting to extensions, so come with a plan: a paydown, rescue capital, a partial sale or a clean handoff. Waiting until the maturity date is how a $41 million balance becomes a $66 million judgment.

If you're hunting for distressed Florida assets

Look where the capital structure broke, not where the market broke. That means 2021 and 2022 vintage apartments with bridge debt, older downtown office with too much leverage, and select-service hotels. Build relationships with receivers, special servicers and bankruptcy counsel, because that's where the Florida deals trade. Use our Cap Rate Index and deal calculators to make sure a "discount" is actually below market.

If you're a tenant in a building that might be in trouble

Check that your lease has a subordination, non-disturbance and attornment agreement, so a new owner has to honor it. A receiver or new owner may also be motivated to lock in tenants, which can be leverage for your renewal. Our CRE glossary explains the terms.

If you're an investor from outside Florida

Don't mistake Florida's low CMBS distress for no opportunity. The opportunities are smaller, more local and move through court processes. Having a local team that watches the dockets matters more here than a national data feed. Start with our investor intelligence page.

What we're watching

• October: September CMBS delinquency and distress data from Trepp and CRED iQ. Early September office readings were already above 14% delinquency. [3]
• Q4 2026: The outcomes of Florida multifamily receiverships and bankruptcy sales, which will set real pricing for distressed Florida apartments.
• December FOMC meeting: Another hike would push more floating-rate borrowers over the edge.
• 2027: Another $652 billion of maturities nationally, with lenders less willing to extend. [6]

The Florida CRE series

1. Florida commercial real estate, fall 2026: what the numbers actually say
2. Follow the rooftops: Florida's inland markets
3. Florida's CRE debt reckoning (you're here)

Frequently asked questions

Is there a lot of distressed commercial real estate in Florida?

Less than in most of the country, at least in securitized loans. CRED iQ data put Orlando's CMBS distress rate around 3% in mid-2026, against 11.6% across the 50 largest U.S. markets, and Miami below 10%. Florida's distress is concentrated in floating-rate multifamily bought in 2021 and 2022, older downtown office and some hotels, not in industrial or retail.

How long does a commercial foreclosure take in Florida?

Florida is a judicial foreclosure state, so every foreclosure goes through circuit court. A typical uncontested commercial case runs roughly 8 to 14 months from default to sale, and contested or complex cases take longer. Lenders often ask the court to appoint a receiver to manage the property in the meantime.

What is a receivership sale in Florida?

Under Florida's Uniform Commercial Real Estate Receivership Act, Chapter 714 of the Florida Statutes, effective July 1, 2020, a court-appointed receiver can take control of commercial property and, in certain circumstances and with court approval, sell it before a foreclosure judgment and free and clear of liens.

How much commercial real estate debt matures in 2026?

The Mortgage Bankers Association estimates $875 billion of U.S. commercial and multifamily mortgages mature in 2026, 17% of the $5.0 trillion outstanding, followed by $652 billion in 2027. Credit companies and other non-bank lenders have the largest share of their books maturing, at 29%.

What taxes apply when buying distressed property in Florida?

Florida's documentary stamp tax applies to deeds at $0.70 per $100 of consideration, or $1.05 per $100 for non-single-family property in Miami-Dade, including deeds in lieu of foreclosure. New mortgages carry $0.35 per $100 in documentary stamps plus a 0.2% nonrecurring intangible tax.

Methodology and sources

This report draws on CMBS performance data from Trepp and CRED iQ, the Mortgage Bankers Association's maturity survey, court filings and press reports on specific Florida cases, and Florida statutes and agency guidance. CMBS data covers securitized loans only; bank, debt fund and CLO loans are not included in those rates. Descriptions of lawsuits reflect allegations and reported filings, not court findings unless a judgment is noted. Nothing here is legal advice; distressed acquisitions require Florida counsel. Sources are numbered in the order they first appear.

1. Multifamily Dive, Multifamily CMBS servicing rate declined, delinquencies stayed flat in August: Trepp, September 2026
2. Commercial Observer, What's driving CMBS distress in the top U.S. metro areas (CRED iQ data), August 10, 2026
3. CRE Daily, Office CMBS special servicing reaches record high 15.7% (CRED iQ data), September 2026
4. CRED iQ, Office distress dominates largest U.S. CMBS markets in April 2026
5. Multifamily Dive via NewsBreak, bank-held multifamily delinquency (CRED iQ analysis of FDIC data), September 2026
6. Mortgage Bankers Association, 17 percent of commercial and multifamily mortgage balances to mature in 2026, February 9, 2026
7. Fident Capital, The 2026 maturity wall (summarizing Morningstar DBRS analysis reported by The Wall Street Journal and Trepp data), July 2026
8. The Real Deal, Lurin Capital files for bankruptcy protection on two Florida apartment buildings, March 10, 2026
9. Bay News 9, Foreclosure complaint filed against Elements on Third owner, February 12, 2026
10. Elevenflo, summary of Lurin Real Estate Holdings Chapter 11 and receivership filings, 2026
11. Commercial Real Estate Direct, Ardent seen foreclosing on Tampa apartment project (citing Tampa Bay Business Journal), May 20, 2026
12. GlobeSt, New York investor zeroes in on Flagler (Courthouse Tower sale), March 2016
13. High-Rise Facilities, New York buyer acquires Miami's Courthouse Tower (and 200 SE 1st Street sale), 2016
14. The Real Deal, Stonerock loses downtown office buildings in $66M foreclosure, June 23, 2026
15. Connect CRE, Return to Lender: Week of June 25, 2026 (citing South Florida Business Journal)
16. Bisnow, Foreclosure sale scheduled for Miami office buildings: The South Florida Deal Sheet, June 2026
17. Matthews, The Bellwether State: Florida's CMBS hotel defaults as a national indicator, 2025
18. Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick, Tampa Bay and Florida's foreclosure wave: what it means for regional lenders' commercial portfolios, August 2026
19. The Florida Bar Business Law Section, The Uniform Commercial Real Estate Receivership Act
20. Adams and Reese, Florida's new Uniform Commercial Real Estate Receivership Act provides certainty in uncertain times
21. Florida Department of Revenue, Documentary Stamp Tax guide
22. Barnes Walker, What are doc stamps? A guide to Florida's documentary stamp tax (intangible tax rate)
23. Florida First Capital Finance Corporation, SBA 504 loan interest rates, September 2026

Cite this report: Serretiello, R. and Taddei, C. (2026, September 30). Florida's commercial real estate debt reckoning: where the distress is, and where it isn't. The List. https://thelistorlando.com/blog/florida-cre-debt-distress-2026/

This report is for general information and education. It is not investment, legal, tax or insurance advice. Market data comes from third-party sources believed to be reliable but not independently verified, and conditions change quickly. Talk to qualified professionals, including Florida counsel, about your specific situation before making a decision.