JLL put out new bid and credit numbers on Tuesday. If you run a buy-side desk, the line that matters is the one Richard Bloxam used: liquidity is back. June posted the biggest monthly jump in bidding in a year. July had the second-highest count of unique bidders since they started the index five years ago. Credit Intensity printed 112 in July, still above the 2021 peak. More people are showing up on sales. More of them are paying through the ask.
The catch is which asset class. Multifamily is the softest bid on the same tape.
The bid by asset class, at a glance
Liquidity is back across the tape, but not evenly. Here is where the competition is going, drawn from the numbers JLL, CBRE, and CoStar put out this week.
| Sector | Bid competition | What is driving it |
|---|---|---|
| Retail | Crowded on thin supply | Owners are profitable and holding, so the few listings that come out draw a crowd |
| Industrial | Strong | The e-commerce and reshoring story continues; CBRE had manufacturing leasing up 27 percent year over year at midyear |
| Multifamily | Weakest bid, weakest credit | Still working through a historic supply wave, and in-place NOI can get worse even as headline vacancy eases |
What the indexes actually say
JLL's Bid Intensity Index is a pair of facts: how many unique buyers land on a sale, and how far the winning number sits from the asking price. Over 100 means the room is crowded and the winner usually clears the ask. Credit Intensity does the same job on the debt side (unique lenders quoting, winning LTVs). Lauro Ferroni, who runs Americas capital markets research at JLL, told Bisnow the IC version: when both sit above 100, winning bids tend to go through the ask, and if the lines are still rising you should plan for more volume behind them.
Credit got healthy first. Bidding is catching up. Ferroni told CNBC that credit intensity has been leading bid intensity because nobody gets loud on price until they believe they can finance the close. The money is coming back from CMBS, life companies, the agencies, and debt funds. His explanation is not complicated. Lenders like the yield. They want the book. The default wave they modeled after 2022 never really showed up.
Winning LTVs and the number of distinct lenders quoting have cooled since April, but lenders are still competing harder than buyers. The spread between the two indexes peaked in May and has been shrinking, which JLL reads as loans starting to turn into closed sales. Trey Morsbach, who runs U.S. debt advisory there, said the wider lender pool gives you optionality even with bond yields sitting in the way.
You will feel this in the inbox before you see it in closed-sale reports.
Retail and industrial are getting the traffic. Apartments are not.
Retail owners are making money and do not want to sell, so the few listings that come out get crowded. Industrial still has the e-commerce book and the reshoring story. CBRE's midyear numbers, the ones CNBC cited, had manufacturing leasing up 27 percent year over year. Apartments sit on the other side of that. Weakest sector for bidding, weakest for credit, and still chewing through a historic supply wave. National vacancy is easing if you only look at the headline. CoStar's stabilized figure (the one that throws out units still in lease-up) rose 34 basis points in the second quarter. You can watch occupancy "improve" on a market slide and still buy a property whose in-place NOI is getting worse.
JLL also flagged the backup in U.S. yields as a weight on bid-ask, especially on tightly priced multi. Ferroni does not think this is frothy. He called the next few months gradual, and he mentioned the Treasury's recent long-bond purchases as a help for people already in underwriting. Whether deep capital keeps beating higher coupons is the open question. For your team the picture is narrower. More bidders on the files that look clean. More quotes from lenders. Apartments still have to prove cash flow that is actually in place.
A crowded bid does not make the T-12 nicer
When unique bidder counts sit near a five-year high, a slow first pass stops being a calendar issue. You miss the second round, or you write a number off a broker NOI you never rebuilt. You already know the OM is a marketing document. You already know the T-12 is where insurance step-ups, tax catch-ups, and one-time concession reversals live. You already know the rent roll and the income statement will not match, and that loss to lease is a story until you check what is actually leasing. What changed is how long you get. If the first model still takes half a day of PDF reconstruction, you are either passing because you ran out of hours or bidding on someone else's narrative.
Keep the split simple. Grind is pulling the T-12, rebuilding the roll, and getting the numbers into the Excel file your IC already trusts. Judgment is whether 2 percent rent growth is honest on this block, whether the exit cap needs 25 to 50 basis points of room, and whether the debt quote still works if the 10-year stays bid. Those last questions got harder this summer. Speed with no page cite just gets a wrong bid out the door faster.
More packages, same headcount
A desk that sees 200 OMs a year and fully models 40 is already rationing. July's bidder count makes that worse. You are not going to hire three people because Credit Intensity printed 112. You can stop burning the first four hours of every file on data transfer.
That is what we built AcquiOS to do. Forward the OM, the T-12, and the rent roll. The model comes back in your template, each number tied to a page, so the analyst starts on the three line items that kill deals instead of re-keying last December's payroll. More files get a real first pass. More of those passes produce a written reason to PASS instead of a buried email. The deals you decline start to look like a record, not a folder of unread PDFs.
Once the file is in your template you can score it against the buy box (PROCEED, CAUTION, PASS). Handy when retail and industrial are drawing the crowd and your apartment box still needs the extra hour. Not a substitute for committee. Just a way to stop walking IC a file that was never going to clear.
Ferroni thinks there is gas left. Gradual still means more tours, more best-and-finals, and more executive summaries that look fine on page one. The teams that keep up will rebuild NOI before the second call.
What to do this week
If you are in market this week, pick an OM you already have. Get the T-12 and the rent roll into your Excel. Check NOI, occupancy, and in-place rent against the source pages. Then see whether the seller's growth case survives a 34-basis-point move in stabilized vacancy and a debt quote that still has to live with higher Treasuries.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CRE liquidity really back in 2026?
By JLL's own indexes, yes. Bidding posted its biggest monthly jump in a year in June, July recorded the second-highest count of unique bidders in the index's five-year history, and the Credit Intensity Index printed 112, still above its 2021 peak. Credit recovered first and bidding is catching up, with capital flowing again from CMBS, life companies, the agencies, and debt funds. The competition is real, but it is not spread evenly across asset classes.
Why is multifamily the weakest sector for bidding right now?
Apartments are still working through a historic supply wave, so even as headline vacancy eases, in-place NOI can keep getting worse. CoStar's stabilized vacancy figure, which excludes units still in lease-up, rose 34 basis points in the second quarter, and JLL flagged the backup in U.S. yields as an extra weight on tightly priced multifamily. Retail owners are profitable and holding, and industrial still has the e-commerce and reshoring story, so both draw more of the crowd than apartments do.
What is JLL's Bid Intensity Index?
It measures two things on every sale: how many unique buyers show up, and how far the winning number sits from the asking price. A reading over 100 means the room is crowded and the winner usually clears the ask. The Credit Intensity Index does the same job on the debt side, tracking unique lenders quoting and winning LTVs, and it has been a leading indicator because buyers do not get aggressive on price until they believe they can finance the close.
How do you underwrite multifamily fast enough to compete in a crowded bid?
Cut the time you spend rebuilding the file, not the time you spend on judgment. The grind is pulling the T-12, rebuilding the rent roll, and getting the numbers into the Excel model your investment committee trusts, with every figure tied back to a source page. AcquiOS does that step from the forwarded OM, T-12, and rent roll, so the analyst starts on the assumptions that actually decide the deal: whether rent growth is honest, whether the exit cap needs room, and whether the debt quote still works. You can then score the file against your buy box as Proceed, Caution, or Pass.