Rents are stable--or declining--for many business owners, who look at the cost of office, retail, or warehousing spaces and may say the commercial real estate market has never been better. But the underlying factors behind those moderating prices have landlords fretting up a storm--along with bankers worried about the health of maturing loans on those properties.

On the surface, many businesses are getting price breaks thanks to the basic rules of office space supply and demand. Nationally, vacancy rates have risen to a historically high 18 percent as many companies continue pandemic-era hybrid or work-from-home arrangements. That's left office space empty or significantly underused, forcing some landlords to lower rents to attract tenants. While that's great for business owners happy to cut costs, plunging revenues for landlords will make it challenging to repay their loans on those same properties.

And with more than $900 billion in commercial real estate (CRE) debt maturing this year, their bankers have begun worrying about the possibility of rising default rates threatening the entire sector. That fear, as noted in a Washington Post report on the CRE pinch, is inspired by a convergence of factors that could undermine the stability--and even existence--of some lenders.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Inc.