While multifamily remains strong, exec reveals one sector brokers should target
Brokers looking for the right sectors to help their commercial clients find opportunities know they can rely on some of the same ones that performed well in 2025.
Multifamily will likely continue its dominance, as many markets continue to struggle with housing shortages. Data centers will continue to attract attention, even if there is local pushback to their creation starting to pop up across the country.
These sectors all performed well in Agora’s recent report on fundraising in the commercial real estate industry. Multifamily captured 48.61% of all capital raised and generated 40.31% of total investment returns in 2025.
But what do brokers have to look forward to in 2026? As the second quarter gets underway, one executive reveals that there is one sector that brokers shouldn’t forget when looking for deals.
Bar Mor (pictured top), founder and CEO of Agora, said the momentum is building in the industrial sector, and he thinks it could be a strong pick in 2026.
“Industrial is the one I’d keep an eye on,” Mor told Mortgage Professional America. “It doesn’t always get the same headline attention, but the momentum is clearly building, especially on the returns side. Retail is a bit of the opposite. There’s improvement, and there are definitely good deals, but it’s less consistent. It’s much more dependent on the specific market and execution.
“If you zoom out, it’s the industrial segment with an upside, multifamily as the steady performer, and retail that requires more selectivity.”
The impact of higher rates
As commercial mortgage brokers know, the swings in mortgage rates don’t have the same impact as they do on the conventional mortgage space.
That doesn’t mean that there is no impact of the recent rate increases on the commercial sector. Mor said he thinks what higher rates tend to do is serve as a filter for the best deals. The ones that make the most sense pass through the filter and get done, while the weaker deals require a little more effort to get closed.
“Higher rates affect commercial a bit, but not in a dramatic way,” he said. “CRE doesn’t react to changes overnight the same way residential does. What you’re seeing is more of a filtering effect. The strong deals are still getting done, and the weaker ones are getting pushed out or reworked.”
However, refinances are impacted by rate increases across the mortgage spectrum. In the commercial space, it becomes complicated because the deals are usually very large.
“Refinancing is probably where you feel it the most,” Mor said. “There’s a lot of debt up for repayment, and higher rates make some of those deals tougher to make sense of. But overall, the market is still moving. It’s just more selective again.”
Xander Snyder, senior commercial real estate economist for First American, told Mortgage Professional America the impact of higher rates might not be completely clear just yet across the commercial sector.
“It’s still too early to say with much confidence,” he said. “Interest rate volatility did start to pick up earlier in the year, but the biggest jump came in March. We do not yet have a full picture of how much that affected the commercial market. Looking just at January and February, rate volatility increased somewhat, while commercial transaction volume was down about 4% compared with the same period in 2025.
“That suggests volatility might have been a headwind for activity, but the evidence is not strong enough to say it was the main reason activity slowed. I’m also skeptical that rate volatility would show up that quickly in CRE sales activity.”
Infrastructure on the rise
One other sector that will likely outperform its 2025 numbers is infrastructure. While it raised just 0.13% of total capital, the lowest percentage of any sector in Agora’s 2025 report, that will likely change in 2026.
The report cites increasing demand in AI driving investment in data centers and power infrastructure as likely reasons why the infrastructure sector will see a large increase this year.
While the industrial sector had the second-lowest percentage of capital raised in 2025, Mor thinks it could be another sleeper pick in 2026. He also sees some opportunities in the retail sector, but brokers have to be wary of which deals they go after.
“If I had to point brokers to one area, I’d say keep a close eye on industrial,” Mor said. “It feels like it has the most room to grow. On the flip side, retail still raises more questions, not across the board, but enough that you have to be very intentional about where and how you play.”
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