Commercial real estate buyers are reopening deals signed earlier in 2026 after the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark rate by a quarter percentage point on Sept. 16, and Daniel Kaufman, founder and CEO of Kaufman & Company, says the retrade wave is separating capital that can close from capital that cannot.
The minutes released Oct. 7 showed most Fed officials believe another increase would likely be appropriate by year end. Since then, The Wall Street Journal and trade outlets including CRE Daily and Citybiz have reported buyers pressing to renegotiate deals signed earlier in 2026, with some threatening to walk away. Trepp data cited in that coverage show 11.42% of CMBS loans were with special servicers in August, the highest share since February 2013.
“A retrade is a buyer telling a seller the deal was really a bet on the rate,” Kaufman said. “When the rate moves, the price moves, and everyone downstream waits. The sellers, contractors and towns counting on those projects carry that uncertainty. We invest our own capital, so our underwriting has to work without assuming the next Fed decision goes our way.”
The distinction matters because a retrade is not an abstract negotiating tactic. When a buyer reopens a signed contract, the seller loses certainty on price, contractors lose scheduling visibility and the communities expecting the project absorb the delay. The special servicing share, at its highest level in more than a decade, indicates that a growing slice of commercial mortgage debt is already under stress.
Kaufman said the moment favors long-term owners over buyers whose returns depend on a narrow financing window, particularly in housing, where a stalled closing can push back construction and leave homes unbuilt. “This is when family office capital should earn its keep,” Kaufman said. “We are not looking to win by grinding down a seller who negotiated in good faith. We want to be the partner people can count on at the closing table, because on a housing deal a delay is not a line item; it is fewer homes for the people who need them.”
Kaufman & Company, described at thekaufmanco.com, invests only its own capital and does not raise outside funds, a structure Kaufman argues removes the pressure to reprice a deal when financing conditions shift. Its operating companies span housing development, design and construction, real estate consulting and venture investment. This month the company announced BUILD 2030, a national initiative coordinating its housing, real estate and AI infrastructure work. The platform represents more than $2 billion in project value and more than 10,000 housing units across more than 25 years of building, lending and investing.
For sellers, builders and the municipalities waiting on housing pipelines, the implication is that certainty of execution may matter more than the headline price. For investors, the retrade wave is a test of whether committed capital can hold a deal together when the cost of borrowing moves against it.
