Richmond's CMBS footprint runs to $1.1 billion across 50 loans, and the distress in it is concentrated in one place. Office is both the largest book at $409 million and the most distressed, with 40.6% of it in special servicing or 60-plus days delinquent — nearly four times the 11.3% national office rate. Retail, the other pillar of the market, tells the opposite story: a comparably sized book carrying no filed distress at all against a 2.7% national mark.
The calendar is the thing to watch. The heaviest maturity load lands in 2028, when $425 million — about 40% of the book — comes due, and 38.2% of that vintage is already distressed on the filed record. For now the metro-wide distress rate has held flat at 15.7% as of July 2026, and median DSCR across the book sits at 1.81, leaving the strain contained to the office column rather than spread across the market.
Beneath the loan tape, the on-the-ground record shows 25 distress events over the past year — 8 store closures and 17 layoff notices touching 2,050 jobs. Local unemployment stood at 3.8% in July 2026, up 0.4 point year over year, and none of the six banks tracked here register as distressed or on early-warning status.
Richmond, VA is showing three of four stress signals elevated. Store closures are elevated at 7 closures (1.28 per 100k jobs), but this is driven by metro size rather than rate — the metro ranks 58th of 392 by count versus 236th by rate. WARN layoff notices are elevated with 16 notices (0.22% of employment), and bank CRE over the noncurrent line is elevated at $1,474.4mm (11.84% of allocated CRE). Securitized loans in special servicing, however, are not elevated, with 4 rows (15.76% of the securitized balance read here). Of the six pairs, three agree on elevated readings and three disagree. The disagreements tell a structural story: closures hot with the CMBS tape quiet reads as retail failing on buildings the tape doesn't hold; WARN hot with the tape quiet suggests employer cuts without the securitized book moving; and bank hot with tape quiet indicates lenders stressed on a book the tape cannot see. The CMBS leg's absence of elevation (4 rows at 15.76%) is not a sign of no distress — it reads a different population than the bank leg.
| Signal | Level | Rate | Rank by count | Rank by rate | Reading |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| store closures store closures per 100,000 jobs |
7 closures | 1.28 per 100k jobs | 58 of 392 | 236 of 392 | elevated trailing 365 days to today
|
| layoff notices (WARN) workers on layoff notices as a share of the metro's employment |
16 notices | 0.22% | 44 of 386 | 106 of 386 | elevated 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 |
$1.47bn | 11.84% | 33 of 393 | 49 of 393 | elevated
allocated 2026-03-31
|
| securitized loans in special servicing share of the securitized balance read here that is in special servicing |
4 loan records | 15.76% | 42 of 335 | 29 of 335 | quiet 2026-07-29
|
In Richmond, VA, the elevated distress signals are bank-distressed CRE, closures, and WARN notices. Specifically, bank distressed CRE is $1.47bn, with a 90th percentile measure of 2.3% of bank CRE allocated to risk, while the bank CRE at risk at the P90 is 10.2%. Also elevated are closures (7 store closures in the past year) and WARN notices (16 in the past year). The CMBS special servicing reading is elevated as well, with $166.0mm in special servicing UPB, representing 15.8% of metro UPB. However, the reading for distressed bank assets is unavailable, as the figure provided is stated as 0 but the exact dollar amount in billions is not given—only the count of distressed banks (0) is noted. The overall convergence is 3, indicating a modest, early-phase signal.
| Bank | Deposit share | CRE / Capital* | Room contributed | Noncurrent CRE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Atlantic Union Bank VA | 19.6% | 264% total 363%
|
🔒 | 0.42% |
| Primis Bank VA | 40.7% | 188% total 317%
|
🔒 | 3.31% |
| Townebank VA | 14.3% | 249% total 345%
|
🔒 | 0.19% |
| Citizens And Farmers Bank VA | 65.2% | 267% total 304%
|
🔒 | 0.00% |
| Blue Ridge Bank, National Association VA | 41.1% | 255% total 315%
|
🔒 | 0.14% |
| Fulton Bank, National Association PA | 0.7% | 184% total 283%
|
🔒 | 0.79% |
| Locus Bank, Inc. VA | 36.6% | 195% total 226%
|
🔒 | 0.71% |
| First Community Bank VA | 6.5% | 202% total 296%
|
🔒 | 0.20% |
| Chesapeake Bank VA | 11.2% | 226% total 282%
|
🔒 | 0.29% |
| First Bank VA | 20.0% | 283% total 391%
|
🔒 | 0.00% |
| The First Bank And Trust Company VA | 1.9% | 240% total 277%
|
🔒 | 0.08% |
| Virginia National Bank VA | 0.9% | 226% total 289%
|
🔒 | 0.00% |
| Southern Bank And Trust Company NC | 0.1% | 158% total 320%
|
🔒 | 0.12% |
| Burke & Herbert Bank & Trust Company VA | 0.5% | 335% total 424%
|
🔒 | 1.24% |
| Bank | Total CRE | CRE / Capital* | Noncurrent CRE | Early Warning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Locus Bank, Inc. | $170M | 195% total 226%
|
0.71% | 🔒 |
| Atlantic Union Bank | $15.9B | 264% total 363%
|
0.42% | 🔒 |
| New Horizon Bank, National Association | $126M | 264% total 401%
|
0.08% | 🔒 |
| Citizens And Farmers Bank | $1.0B | 267% total 304%
|
0.00% | 🔒 |
| Community Bankers' Bank | $73M | 286% total 351%
|
0.00% | 🔒 |
Richmond, VA sits right at a tight spot — its maturing CMBS wall of $563.8mm is 2.50 times the local banks’ lending room, placing it 25th most strained among the 270 metros ranked, though that ratio falls to just 0.60 before subtracting committed draws of $1.20bn. Even with $225.6mm of remaining capacity after those draws, the math implies the strongest local lenders (14 qualifying institutions, with 8 excluded here) cannot readily cover the full wall, and given that 15.7% of the CMBS balance is distressed, refinancing risk is clearly elevated. Still, a key caveat: much of the strain could be an artifact of excluding banks whose deposits don’t map cleanly to the metro — with only 17 maturing loans and $1.06bn in total CMBS UPB, the size of the wall matters more than the headline ratio here.
| REIT | SS NOI | SS Revenue | Occupancy | Rent | As Of |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MAA | +5.8% | +4.7% | 96.2% | +2.9% | 2026-07-29 |
| UDR | +5.1% | +3.9% | 96.3% | +4.4% | 2025-10-29 |
Over the past 365 days, Richmond, VA has seen 1 CRE-related bankruptcy filing, which affected 2,050 jobs according to available notices (a floor, as some filings don't specify headcount). On the ground, 7 store closures have been confirmed, tied to 17 WARN notices issued in the metro during this window. Note that the bankruptcy count uses a state proxy, not a metro-native tally, so exact local readings for that metric are unavailable.