The headline numbers in commercial real estate rarely tell the full story. First-quarter 2026 data is a case in point: Lee & Associates reports that industrial and multifamily are slowly absorbing a historic supply surge, office is staging an uneven recovery, and retail is contending with a shortage of quality space rather than a glut of it. Here’s a sector-by-sector look at where U.S. commercial real estate stands heading into the rest of the year — and which markets are bucking the trend. Sponsored: Download Lee & Associates’ 2026 Q1 North America Market report. Industrial Overview: Logistics Demand Moderates; Small Space Needs Gain There was continued weakness in the first quarter across North American industrial markets. The slowing has produced an overhang of newly delivered speculative logistics space, while rent growth has fallen to virtually nil. In the United States, net absorption totaled 32.8 million square feet in Q1, or 0.2 percent of the 19.3-billion-square-foot inventory. It was the lowest rate of tenant growth in more than a decade aside from the 17.6-million-square-foot contraction in Q2 following the U.S.’s initial tariff announcements. The overall vacancy rate in Q1 settled at 7.5 percent, which has nearly doubled since 2022 as new …
