JLL released new bidding and lending numbers on Tuesday. If you run a buy-side team, the headline is the one Richard Bloxam of JLL used: liquidity is back. June saw the biggest monthly jump in bidding in a year. July had the second-highest number of unique bidders since JLL started tracking the index five years ago. Its Credit Intensity Index, which measures how hard lenders are competing to make loans, reached 112 in July, still above its 2021 peak. More buyers are showing up for deals, and more of them are paying at or above the asking price.
The catch is which property type. In that same report, multifamily drew the weakest bidding of any sector.
The bid by asset class, at a glance
Liquidity is back across the market, but not evenly. Here is where the competition is going, based on the numbers JLL, CBRE, and CoStar released 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 a building's net operating income can fall even as headline vacancy eases |
What the indexes actually say
JLL's Bid Intensity Index tracks two things on every sale: how many separate buyers bid, and how far the winning offer lands from the asking price. A reading above 100 means the sale drew a crowd and the winner usually paid at or above the asking price. The Credit Intensity Index does the same on the lending side, tracking how many lenders quote on a loan and the loan-to-value ratios they win at (loan-to-value, or LTV, is the size of the loan compared with the value of the property). Lauro Ferroni, who runs Americas capital markets research at JLL, put it simply to Bisnow: when both indexes sit above 100, winning bids tend to clear the asking price, and if the lines are still climbing, expect more deals to follow.
Lending recovered first, and buying is catching up. Ferroni told CNBC that lender competition tends to lead buyer competition, because buyers do not bid aggressively until they are confident they can finance the purchase. The money is flowing back from commercial mortgage-backed securities, insurance companies, government agencies, and debt funds. His explanation is straightforward: lenders like the returns, they want the business, and the wave of defaults many of them expected after 2022 never really arrived.
Loan-to-value ratios and the number of lenders quoting have eased a little since April, but lenders are still competing harder than buyers. The gap between the two indexes peaked in May and has been narrowing since, which JLL reads as a sign that financing is starting to convert into closed sales. Trey Morsbach, who runs U.S. debt advisory at JLL, said the deeper pool of lenders gives buyers more choices, even with bond yields still elevated.
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 properties that do list draw a crowd. Industrial still has the e-commerce and reshoring story behind it: CBRE's midyear numbers, cited by CNBC, showed manufacturing leasing up 27 percent year over year. Apartments sit on the other side of that. They are the weakest sector for both buying and lending, and still working through a historic wave of new supply. National vacancy looks like it is easing if you only read the headline. But CoStar's stabilized vacancy figure, which leaves out buildings that are still filling up for the first time, actually rose 34 basis points (a basis point is one hundredth of a percent) in the second quarter. So a market report can show occupancy improving while the specific building you are buying has net operating income, or NOI, that is still getting worse.
JLL also flagged the recent rise in U.S. Treasury yields as a drag on deals, especially aggressively priced apartment deals where the margins are already thin. Ferroni does not think the market is overheating. He expects the next few months to improve gradually, and he pointed to the Treasury's recent long-bond purchases as a help for buyers already underwriting deals. Whether all that available capital keeps outrunning higher borrowing costs is the open question. For your team, the practical picture is simpler: more bidders on the deals that look clean, more quotes from lenders, and apartments that still have to prove the cash flow is actually there today.
A crowded market doesn't make the numbers any cleaner
When the number of bidders is near a five-year high, a slow first pass on a deal is no longer just an inconvenience. You miss the next round of bidding, or you put in an offer based on a broker's income figure you never rebuilt yourself. You already know the offering memorandum is a marketing document. You already know the T-12 (the trailing twelve months of a property's actual income and expenses) is where the surprises hide: rising insurance costs, catch-up tax bills, and one-time concessions that will not repeat. You already know the rent roll and the income statement rarely match, and that loss to lease (the gap between what tenants pay today and current market rent) is only a theory until you check what units are actually leasing for. What has changed is how little time you now get. If your first model still takes half a day of rebuilding numbers out of a PDF, you are either passing because you ran out of hours, or bidding on the seller's story instead of your own.
Think of the work in two buckets. The grunt work is pulling the T-12, rebuilding the rent roll, and getting the numbers into the Excel model your investment committee already trusts. The judgment is the part that actually matters: whether 2 percent rent growth is honest in this neighborhood, whether the exit cap rate needs another 25 to 50 basis points of cushion, and whether the loan still works if the 10-year Treasury yield stays high. Those judgment calls got harder this summer. Moving fast without tracing every figure back to its source just gets a wrong bid out the door faster.
More deals to review, the same size team
A team that receives 200 offering memorandums a year but fully models only 40 of them is already rationing its time. A busier bidding market only makes that worse. You are not going to hire three more analysts because lender competition hit 112. But you can stop losing the first four hours of every deal to copying numbers over by hand.
That is what we built AcquiOS to do. Forward the OM, the T-12, and the rent roll, and the model comes back in your own template with every number tied to its source page. Your analyst can start on the few line items that actually kill deals, instead of re-typing last December's payroll. More deals get a real first look, and more of those reviews end with a written reason to pass rather than a decision buried in an inbox. The deals you turn down start to become a record you can point to, not a folder of unread PDFs.
Once the deal is in your template, AcquiScore can rate it against your buy box as Proceed, Caution, or Pass. That helps when retail and industrial are drawing all the attention and your apartment criteria still deserve a closer look. It does not replace your investment committee. It just keeps you from walking the committee through a deal that was never going to clear.
Ferroni thinks the recovery has room to run. Even a gradual one means more property tours, more final-round bids, and more polished summaries that look fine on the first page. The teams that keep up will be the ones that rebuild the real net operating income before the second call, not after.
What to do this week
If you are actively bidding this week, pick an OM you already have. Load the T-12 and rent roll into your Excel, and check net operating income, occupancy, and in-place rents against the source pages. Then see whether the seller's growth story still holds up against a 34-basis-point rise in vacancy and a loan priced off today's higher Treasury yields.
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 reached 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.