Commercial Real Estate Credit —
Durham-Chapel Hill, NC
The state of disclosed CRE credit in this market · NC
The read
$554M of CMBS across 25 loans. The heaviest maturity load lands in 2029 ($278M, 50% of the book). Distress is flat in the filed record — 15.1% as of 2026-07. 2 on-the-ground distress events in the past year.
Overview
CMBS
Submarkets
Local Banks
Jobs & Demand
On The Ground
Loading map…
The CMBS properties our stress model flags here, plus recent store closures and layoffs. Stressed is a wider net than distressed — the distressed figure above counts only loans already in special servicing or 60+ days delinquent, while these dots also include performing loans facing maturity or coverage pressure. Property dots sit at the center of their ZIP code, not the building — they show where stress concentrates, not which asset. Closures and layoffs are pinned to address where we have it. Open any dot to the building and the loan behind it →
Durham's book is small, its distress isn't — and the record isn't moving
Durham-Chapel Hill carries a compact CMBS book: $554M spread across just 25 loans. Against that modest base, the filed distress rate reads 15.1% as of July 2026 — a level that has held flat rather than climbing. Beneath the headline number the maturity ladder tells a split story: the heaviest load lands in 2029, at $278M, fully half the book, but that slug carries a distress rate of just 1.8%. The pressure sits earlier, in a small 2028 tranche where the distress rate runs 92%.
The on-the-ground signal is quiet. Two store closures have been filed in the past year, with no layoff notices logged. The median DSCR across the book stands at 1.41, and the labor backdrop is firm — unemployment at 3.4% in July 2026, down 0.3 points year over year, with roughly 80,484 office-using jobs and headcount up 0.4% on the year.
The read here is a metro where a high distress rate is concentrated rather than broad-based. The record is flat, the near-term maturities are light, and the bulk of what comes due does so in 2029 — leaving the 15.1% figure a function of a few troubled loans rather than a book turning under the desk.
CMBS Distressed UPB
$83M / 15.1%
in special servicing or 60+ days delinquent
CMBS Maturing ≤ 24mo
$125M
Local Banks (stressed)
0 / 2
Bank Early-Warning
1 flagged
Store Closures (1y)
2
Layoff Notices (1y)
0 / 0 jobs
CMBS Loans / UPB
25 / $554M
Unemployment · Jul 2026
3.4%
-0.3pp yr
Office-Using Jobs · 2024
80,484
+0.4% yr
How much CRE distress is there in Durham-Chapel Hill, NC right now?
Durham-Chapel Hill, NC is showing a distinctly bifurcated distress picture: the market is quiet on the retail and employment side, with store closures at 0.72 per 100k jobs (ranked 288th of 392 by rate) and 0.0% of workers on WARN layoff notices, while the securitized CMBS leg is elevated at 14.98% of balance in special servicing (ranked 30th of 335 by rate, a floor measured over 25.0% of rows). The bank CRE noncurrent rate sits at 4.99% of allocated dollars (ranked 147th of 393). Of the six pair readings, three agree quiet and three disagree—all three disagreements involve the hot CMBS leg against quiet retail/employment/bank legs, with the structural reading pointing to "securitized distress without retail failure—check whether this is an office story," and specifically noting "the buildings are in trouble and the employers are not" and "the securitized paper on these buildings is in trouble and no local lender is carrying it."
The figures behind this answer
| Signal | Level | Rate | Rank by count | Rank by rate | Reading |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| store closures store closures per 100,000 jobs |
2 closures | 0.72 per 100k jobs | 179 of 392 | 288 of 392 | quiet trailing 365 days to today
|
| layoff notices (WARN) workers on layoff notices as a share of the metro's employment |
0 notices | 0% | 313 of 386 | 308 of 386 | quiet trailing 365 days to today
|
| bank CRE at lenders over the noncurrent line share of the CRE lent into this metro that sits at a lender over the blended-noncurrent line |
$241.0mm | 4.99% | 103 of 393 | 147 of 393 | quiet
allocated 2026-03-31
|
| securitized loans in special servicing share of the securitized balance read here that is in special servicing |
12 loan records | 14.98% | 14 of 335 | 30 of 335 | elevated
floor 2026-07-29
|
6 pairs compared
0 both elevated
3 both quiet
3 disagreeing
0 unreadable — a side is blind
1 of four legs elevated
one metro, four independent feeds, each on its own denominator
{'coverage': "114 of 441 metros have at least one blind leg and 48 are blind on all four. Those 48 are the same metros the board's map cannot place and the metro resolver cannot name: one ZIP-to-CBSA crosswalk boundary, showing up three ways.", 'a_count_ranks_by_size': 'Elevation is computed on the COUNT, over a flat threshold, which is a size filter. New York is 2nd of 392 by store closures and 264th of the same 392 by closures per job — both true, and which one you lead with decides what the reader believes. Every leg carries both ranks over ONE population; quote the rate beside the count.', 'disagreement_is_not_severity': 'Where two legs disagree, that is usually a fact about WHICH mechanism is running, not an error in either feed and not a worse metro. The six pairs read different populations, and each note is a STRUCTURAL prior about those populations — nothing here measures a lead or a lag between two legs, so never report one as timing.', 'a_blind_leg_is_not_a_quiet_one': "A leg with no denominator, or whose numerator cannot be measured, reads LOW and means nothing. Each leg publishes a measurement state (allocated, floor, measured, no denominator, no rate, not measurable) for that reason. Never report a blind leg as 'no distress'."}
{'leg': 'closures', 'unit': 'jobs', 'as_of': 'trailing 365 days to today', 'value': 278417, 'measures': 'store closures', 'available': True, 'as_of_kind': 'window', 'what_it_is': "all metro jobs, QCEW annual average — a SIZE normaliser, not a matched population: the feed spans retail, food service and pharmacy and no single QCEW sector covers it. The MATCHED read sits beside it as this leg's second reading"}
{'leg': 'warn', 'unit': 'employed', 'as_of': 'trailing 365 days to today', 'value': 310990, 'measures': 'layoff notices (WARN)', 'available': True, 'as_of_kind': 'window', 'what_it_is': 'employed persons, BLS LAUS, not seasonally adjusted'}
{'leg': 'bank', 'unit': '$mm', 'as_of': '2026-03-31', 'value': 4829.3, 'measures': 'bank CRE at lenders over the noncurrent line', 'available': True, 'as_of_kind': 'stamp', 'what_it_is': 'bank CRE allocated to this metro by branch deposits'}
{'leg': 'cmbs', 'unit': '$mm', 'as_of': '2026-07-29', 'value': 554.0, 'measures': 'securitized loans in special servicing', 'available': True, 'as_of_kind': 'stamp', 'what_it_is': "current balance on the non-pari-passu rows of this tape — the trust's slice, not the whole loan, on both sides of the ratio"}
Written from the figures above · CBSA 20500 · stress_metro · last changed 28 Aug 2026
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Which distress signals are elevated in Durham-Chapel Hill, NC, and which cannot be read?
In Durham-Chapel Hill, NC, the elevated distress signal is CMBS special servicing, with the reading at 15.0% of metro UPB ($83.0mm), and a note that the dollar figure is a floor since the other rows carry no balance. Bank CRE distress is not evident: distressed bank assets are at 0, and the bank CRE at-risk p90 is 6.3% with a bank allocation of 1.0%. A convergence reading is at 1, but this is an isolated signal, not a convergence. Readings that cannot be obtained include store closures (count of 2 over one year) and WARN notices (0 over one year) — these are provided as counts but not as a distress metric — and the phase sequence is listed as "no reading," so any forward-looking trend is unavailable.
The figures behind this answer
- CMBS in special servicing
- $83.0mm
- … as a share of this metro's CMBS balance
- 15.0%
- Bank CRE lent into this metro
- $4.83bn
- … at risk at the 90th percentile
- 6.3%
- CRE at lenders over the noncurrent line
- $241.0mm
- Assets at those lenders
- $0.00bn
- … share needing no branch-deposit allocation
- 1.0%
- Signals reading elevated
- CMBS in special servicing
- Legs agreeing
- 1
- Phase
- watch
- CMBS loans in special servicing
- 12
- Distressed banks
- 0
- Store closures (past year)
- 2
- WARN notices (past year)
- 0
an isolated signal, not a convergence
tens of millions of distressed CRE exposure; measured over 25.0% of this metro's 12 special-servicing rows — the rest carry no balance, so the dollar figure is a FLOOR
signals are present but neither credit-material nor ground-heavy
Written from the figures above · CBSA 20500 · geo_metro_signals · last changed 27 Aug 2026
· Ask your own question →
Jobs & Demand — the labor market under the collateralWatch it change →
Every other zone on this page reads the credit — what the loan is doing.
This one reads the demand underneath it. Office jobs pay office rent;
office rent services the office loan. When the jobs go, the DSCR follows — but not for another year or two.
That lag is the whole point of looking here.
Unemployment · Jul 2026
3.4%
-0.3pp yr
Last 24 months
2.8%3.8%
Monthly metro unemployment (BLS LAUS) — the freshest labor signal there is,
about six weeks behind. Read the direction, not the level: a 4% metro that is rising and a 6% metro that is
falling are not telling you the same thing.
Jobs by CRE-relevant sector · 2024
Annual employment by sector (BLS QCEW, 2024; 278,417 jobs in the metro).
QCEW lags — it is the structural read, not the current one, and we pair it with the monthly unemployment above on purpose.
Office-using sums five supersectors; where BLS withholds any one of them for
disclosure, we show nothing rather than a number we know is too low — so a missing sector here means
“suppressed at the source,” not “zero.”
Sector Heat — CMBS distress rate by property type (metro vs national)See the loans behind the bar →
This metro's CMBS runs 15.1% distressed where its own property mix predicts 7.4% — $43M more than this book would carry at the rate each property type runs elsewhere in the country, dollar-weighted and excluding this metro. The gap is measured; the cause is not.
No CMBS sector data for this metro.
Elimination — does the gap survive a control?
Each row re-prices this metro's book on a finer cell — its own property types, then those types split by loan size, then by vintage — always at the rate that cell runs elsewhere in the country, dollar-weighted. A gap that shrinks toward zero is explained by the control; one that stays has ruled it out. What is measured is what survives, not a cause.
property mix alone
+7.7pp
… and loan size held fixed
+7.5pp
the gap is still there with loan size held fixed too
… and vintage held fixed
+8.8pp
the gap is still there with vintage held fixed too
The largest single contributor is Office: 6 loans, $250M, running 30.9% where the same type runs 11.2% elsewhere — worth 8.9pp of this metro's own rate.
Maturity Wall — CMBS coming due by year, distress within eachSee what’s maturing →
$125M — 23% of the metro's balance — matures within two years; the red slice of each bar is already distressed.
Distress Trend — is this market turning?Track it quarter by quarter →
Realized distress is FLAT — 15.1% now (2026-07), +0.9pp over the year.
Same definition as the cards above — distressed means in special servicing or 60+ days delinquent, dollar-weighted — on a different clock. The cards are today’s tape; this is the disclosed history panel, quarter by quarter, so you can read direction rather than level. Trusts file monthly, so a quarter is usually well covered within weeks of opening and the newest one shown is normally the current one; it is withheld only when its filed book falls below 60% of recent quarters.
Share of the metro’s CMBS in special servicing or 60+ days delinquent, by quarter — a firmer, backward-looking read. A loan under 1.0x DSCR that is still paying is not counted here.
Submarket Heat — where in the metro the distress sitsOpen the submarket →
The top three submarkets hold $440M of the metro's $554M; each bar's colored share is its distress rate.
Bank Door — what the local bank sector could absorbSee it on every loan’s exit read →
$125M of CMBS matures here within two years.
The 4 regional and local banks that gather deposits here could write roughly
$109M more CRE before the 300% supervisory line, so the maturing balance is
1.14× that room.
The median metro sits at 0.12×.
Regional Bank Room
$109M
After Committed Draws
$21M / −81%
Maturing ÷ Room
1.14×
Banks In Footprint
4 / 1 at the line
The room above is already part-sold. Construction lending is a promise drawn
down over two or three years, and the undrawn part is an obligation the bank cannot decline while the borrower performs
— every one of those dollars lands in the same CRE book the 300% line governs. These banks
have $252M of construction committed and not yet
advanced, of which $88M
comes out of the room above, leaving $21M,
with 3 banks
whose entire remaining room is spoken for.
A bank with no room contributes zero here, never a negative one — capacity does not net
across balance sheets — so $164M of what has
been promised is not deducted at all, because there is nothing left to deduct it from. On today’s
capital that is funding already contracted which would cross the line as it draws.
SR 06-26 draws a second line at 100% of capital for construction and land:
3 more cross it
once their own commitments fund.
Counted — 4 regional & local CRE lenders
| Bank | Deposit share | CRE / Capital* | Room contributed | Noncurrent CRE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Banc Of California CA | 20.7% | 291% total 334%
|
🔒 | 4.24% |
| The Fidelity Bank NC | 7.7% | 206% total 373%
|
🔒 | 0.47% |
| First Bank NC | 1.0% | 280% total 366%
|
🔒 | 0.40% |
| Carter Bank & Trust VA | 0.7% | 395% total 423%
|
🔒 | 0.84% |
Not counted — 14 banks with deposits here
These hold deposits in this metro but are left out of the capacity above, because for them deposit location stops indicating where they lend — or they do not lend CRE at all. Real money that could refinance here is deliberately not counted.
no CRE book — CRE under 100% of capital — not a CRE lender
Truist Bank NC · Wells Fargo Bank, National Association SD · Bank Of America, National Association NC · First-Citizens Bank & Trust Company NC · Pnc Bank, National Association DE · Roxboro Savings Bank, Ssb NC · Fifth Third Bank, National Association OH · Jpmorgan Chase Bank, National Association OH · Mechanics & Farmers Bank NC
national — operates in more than 5 states, so deposits stop indicating where it lends
First Horizon Bank TN · First National Bank Of Pennsylvania PA · Pinnacle Bank TN · Woodforest National Bank TX · United Bank VA
* Two ratios, two perimeters.
The large figure is supervisory CRE over total risk-based capital —
construction, multifamily and non-owner-occupied nonfarm nonresidential. That is the book SR 06-26 draws its
300% line against, and it is what the red coloring and the room contributed are both measured on.
Total beneath it adds owner-occupied CRE — lending to a business on
its own premises — which the guidance deliberately leaves out. A bank can sit well above 300% on total CRE and
still be inside the line, with real room to lend; both are shown so the gap is visible rather than surprising.
How to read this. It is not whether any particular loan can refinance — a borrower also reaches
national banks, life companies, agencies and debt funds. It is how much of this metro’s maturing volume the local
bank sector could absorb if it were the only door.
Banks are placed by deposit share (FDIC Summary of Deposits, June 2025) — a proxy for
where they lend, not a measurement; call reports carry no collateral geography. Room = 3× total risk-based capital less CRE held
(SR 06-26, the capital base the rule names — not book equity), from Q2 2026 call reports, apportioned by that share.
Committed construction comes from FFIEC Schedule RC-L as filed at 2026-06-30 —
the undrawn half of loans already written, which the balance sheet above does not show.
Banks in more than 5 states, single-branch bookers and banks that do not lend CRE are excluded —
313 banks holding $268.2B of national capacity not counted here.
Local Lenders — banks headquartered here, worst CRE noncurrent firstUnlock each bank’s early-warning flag →
| Bank | Total CRE | CRE / Capital* | Noncurrent CRE | Early Warning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mechanics & Farmers Bank | $171M | 95% total 220%
|
0.94% | 🔒 |
| Roxboro Savings Bank, Ssb | $51M | 50% total 72%
|
0.00% | 🔒 |
* Two ratios, two perimeters.
The large figure is supervisory CRE over total risk-based capital —
construction, multifamily and non-owner-occupied nonfarm nonresidential. That is the book SR 06-26 draws its
300% line against, and it is what the red coloring and the room contributed are both measured on.
Total beneath it adds owner-occupied CRE — lending to a business on
its own premises — which the guidance deliberately leaves out. A bank can sit well above 300% on total CRE and
still be inside the line, with real room to lend; both are shown so the gap is visible rather than surprising.
Banks are matched to their HQ metro (a proxy for footprint). Noncurrent CRE = CRE-balance-weighted blend of multifamily / nonresidential / construction noncurrent (distress already arrived). Early Warning is a validated leading signal — the bank’s 30-89 early-delinquency rank among all CRE lenders this quarter, which has predicted ~2.3× forward CRE distress. Per-bank flags are on a plan.
Do the banks lending in Durham-Chapel Hill, NC have the capacity to refinance its maturing CRE?
Durham-Chapel Hill, NC ranks 17 of 270 most strained metros for refinancing capacity — but the tight reading is largely an artifact of who the screen can see, not evidence of scarce credit. Only 4 banks qualify in the footprint while 5 are excluded (nationals, card and charter banks whose deposits don’t indicate local lending), and local room before committed draws is $109.1mm against a CMBS wall of $124.9mm across 5 maturing loans — a wall-to-room of 1.14 before draws. Once construction draws already committed ($251.8mm) are deducted, room falls to $21.1mm, pushing the ratio to 5.91 and the distressed share to 15.1% on a $553.7mm CMBS UPB. In short, the metro’s banks likely lack capacity to absorb the full maturing balance after commitments, but the strain is inflated by exclusion, not necessarily a credit event.
The figures behind this answer
- CMBS maturing in the window
- $124.9mm
- … across this many loans
- 5
- Local bank room, before committed draws
- $109.1mm
- Committed construction draws
- $251.8mm
- Local bank room, after those draws
- $21.1mm
- Wall-to-room ratio
- 5.91
- Rank, most strained
- 17
- … out of this many metros ranked
- 270
- … before committed draws
- 1.14
- Population ranked against
- CMBS maturing within 24 months against regional/community bank room in this metro
- Qualifying local banks
- 4
- … excluded from the calculation
- 5
- Distressed share of this metro's CMBS
- 15.1%
- Total CMBS balance here
- $553.7mm
- Capacity band
- tight
Compared against a median wall-to-room ratio of
0.20 across the ranked metros.
5.91 is ABOVE the median of 0.20, so this metro is MORE strained than the typical ranked metro
17 of 270, counting from the MOST strained — a LOWER rank number means MORE strain
{'room_is_a_proxy': 'Room is what regional and community banks could still write before the SR 06-26 concentration line, after deducting construction draws already committed. Deposit footprint is a proxy for lending footprint, not a measurement of it.', 'ratio_is_not_size': 'The most extreme ratios belong to the smallest metros. Read maturing_bal_mm beside the ratio — the map sizes bubbles by the wall, not the strain, for exactly this reason.', 'wall_is_cmbs_only': "The wall is the CMBS balance maturing within 24 months — the maturing debt this platform can see, not the metro's whole maturity load. Every ratio is an upper bound on how much of it local banks would have to absorb.", 'exclusion_artifact': 'A high ratio is as often an exclusion artifact as a credit event. Banks whose deposits do not indicate where they lend (nationals, card and charter banks) are excluded from the room, so a metro served mainly by those reads strained while its credit is simply invisible here. Check banks_qualifying against banks_excluded_here, and explained_by_exclusion.'}
{'fork': 'exclusion, not scarcity', 'note': "More banks are excluded here (5) than qualify (4). This metro's ratio is an artifact of who this read can see, not evidence that credit is scarce."}
True
Written from the figures above · CBSA 20500 · capacity_metro · last changed 06 Sep 2026
· Ask your own question →
On The Ground — recent closures, layoffs & CRE bankruptciesTie these events to loans →
2 local distress events in the past year — store closures, layoffs, and commercial real estate bankruptcies near this metro's collateral.
2026-07-16
BANKRUPTCY
CRE-linked bankruptcy
2026-07-14
CLOSURE
Durham
2026-05-29
BANKRUPTCY
CRE-linked bankruptcy
2025-10-01
CLOSURE
Durham
2025-06-24
CLOSURE
Durham
2024-08-16
LAYOFF
Durham
What has actually happened on the ground in Durham-Chapel Hill, NC recently?
In the Durham-Chapel Hill, NC metro over the past 365 days, the on-the-ground reading shows 2 store closures and 0 WARN notices, with 0 jobs affected. However, the CRE bankruptcy metric is 2, but this figure is a state proxy—bankruptcy filings carry the filer’s state, not the property’s location—so it is not a metro-native count. No additional job-loss or closure signals beyond these are available in the current data window.
The figures behind this answer
- Store closures
- 2
- WARN layoff notices
- 0
- Jobs on those notices
- 0
- CRE-related bankruptcies
- 2
- Window, in days
- 365
STATE PROXY — bankruptcy filings carry the filer's state, not the property's location, so this counts CRE-likely filings in the states this metro's collateral sits in. It is not a metro-native count.
affected_employees is nullable — notices that state no headcount are counted but contribute 0 jobs, so this is a floor.
Closures are matched ZIP -> CBSA and only APPROVED rows count (a pending, machine-extracted row is not yet a closure). This mirrors the Metro Pulse page, not the convergence board — the board applies neither filter and counts higher. Layoffs take the same ZIP -> CBSA and review treatment, and a WARN notice counts if it affects >= 10 people or does not state a headcount (a NULL is not 'fewer than 10').
Written from the figures above · CBSA 20500 · geo_events · last changed 27 Aug 2026
· Ask your own question →
What this page can’t do
Everything above is a snapshot — one market, as it stands today, and
it’s yours to read. What a snapshot can’t tell you is when it moves: which loan slipped a DSCR band
this month, which bank’s early-warning rank crossed into the top quartile, which submarket started turning
while the headline number still looked fine. Distress doesn’t announce itself on the day you happen to check.
This page
One metro · one moment · you come looking.
Verstavo
Every metro · every month · it comes looking for you.
CMBS covers the securitized slice of CRE; bank, closure and layoff signals widen the view.
“No data” in a zone means we don’t observe it here, not that there is no stress.
Employment is BLS (QCEW annual, LAUS monthly) — public data, and the demand leg under all of it.
See the whole picture, not just the pulse.
Metro Pulse is the free, public read. The Verstavo platform goes loan‑by‑loan — stress
scores, maturity walls, special‑servicing transfers, bank CRE, and your own portfolio benchmarked
against the market.