Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue carries $5.1 billion of CMBS across 154 loans, and the strain is concentrated where the book is heaviest. Office is both the metro's largest exposure at $2.6 billion and its most distressed, running a 15.4% distress rate against an 11.1% national mark — a gap that puts Seattle's towers on the wrong side of the comparison. Overall, the filed record has been rising, reaching 8.7% as of July 2026, so the distress here is a status servicers are declaring, not a forecast.
The maturity calendar does not offer much of a reprieve. The heaviest load lands in 2029 at $1.1 billion, the single biggest refinancing year on the page, with another $0.8 billion stacked in 2028. Against that, the median DSCR of 2.04 shows there is still coverage in the broader pool, and sectors outside office read quieter — hospitality's $0.7 billion book shows no distress on the tape.
The on-the-ground signal is the one to watch. The metro logged 145 distress events over the past year — store closures and layoff notices combined — tied to 9,295 jobs. With office-using employment down 2.0% year over year and unemployment at 4.8% as of August 2026, the local demand picture sits underneath an office book already carrying the metro's distress.
Distress in Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA is uniformly elevated across all four independent feeds, with all 6 possible pairwise comparisons agreeing—none quiet, none disagreeing. Store closures rank 6th of 392 by count at 69 closures (3.83 per 100,000 jobs); WARN notices rank 10th of 386 at 80 notices (0.41% of employment); bank CRE over the noncurrent line sits at $1,699.0 million, 5.83% of the $29,126.2 million allocated to the metro (31st of 393 by count); and securitized loans in special servicing total 10 rows at 7.88% of the $5,065.0 million trust slice (20th of 335). No leg is blind, so no reading is unavailable. The unanimity is notable given the bank leg is allocated by branch deposits rather than confirmed by call reports, yet the signature here is broad-based—retail, employers, lenders, and CMBS all read hot simultaneously.
| Signal | Level | Rate | Rank by count | Rank by rate | Reading |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| store closures store closures per 100,000 jobs |
69 closures | 3.83 per 100k jobs | 6 of 392 | 58 of 392 | elevated trailing 365 days to today
|
| layoff notices (WARN) workers on layoff notices as a share of the metro's employment |
80 notices | 0.41% | 10 of 386 | 46 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 |
$1.70bn | 5.83% | 31 of 393 | 131 of 393 | elevated
allocated 2026-03-31
|
| securitized loans in special servicing share of the securitized balance read here that is in special servicing |
10 loan records | 7.88% | 20 of 335 | 57 of 335 | elevated 2026-07-29
|
In Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA, credit distress is confirmed and material, with "hundreds of millions of distressed CRE exposure" behind it. The key elevated signals include bank distressed CRE at $1.70bn (with a 8.9% bank allocation share and 34.6% of bank CRE at risk at the 90th percentile), CMBS special servicing (at $399.0mm, representing 7.9% of metro UPB), and real-economy distress with 69 store closures and 80 WARN notices over the past year. The phase is "peak" and "confirmed," as leading and realized signals fire together. However, bank-level distress cannot be read: the number of distressed banks is 0 per the count, and distressed bank assets are 0 — so that signal is not elevated.
| Bank | Deposit share | CRE / Capital* | Room contributed | Noncurrent CRE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coastal Community Bank WA | 98.6% | 219% total 295%
|
🔒 | 0.28% |
| Washington Trust Bank WA | 24.7% | 216% total 310%
|
🔒 | 0.50% |
| 1st Security Bank Of Washington WA | 43.8% | 221% total 268%
|
🔒 | 0.73% |
| Banner Bank WA | 14.2% | 253% total 379%
|
🔒 | 0.22% |
| Northwest Bank ID | 30.4% | 177% total 224%
|
🔒 | 5.26% |
| Peoples Bank WA | 14.8% | 232% total 328%
|
🔒 | 0.00% |
| Commencement Bank WA | 69.8% | 246% total 391%
|
🔒 | 0.00% |
| Heritage Bank WA | 41.2% | 295% total 432%
|
🔒 | 0.20% |
| Timberland Bank WA | 25.3% | 289% total 378%
|
🔒 | 0.43% |
| Beneficial State Bank CA | 11.9% | 285% total 395%
|
🔒 | 3.44% |
| Mountain Pacific Bank WA | 79.6% | 296% total 444%
|
🔒 | 0.39% |
| Gbc International Bank CA | 8.5% | 269% total 379%
|
🔒 | 0.12% |
| American Continental Bank CA | 3.6% | 196% total 264%
|
🔒 | 0.00% |
| Unibank WA | 100.0% | 365% total 570%
|
🔒 | 0.81% |
| Portage Bank WA | 78.3% | 321% total 415%
|
🔒 | 2.53% |
| Sound Community Bank WA | 45.8% | 311% total 378%
|
🔒 | 0.98% |
| Us Metro Bank CA | 12.6% | 393% total 560%
|
🔒 | 1.97% |
| Mechanics Bank CA | 7.8% | 340% total 362%
|
🔒 | 0.30% |
| United Business Bank CA | 6.6% | 402% total 555%
|
🔒 | 0.48% |
| Bank | Total CRE | CRE / Capital* | Noncurrent CRE | Early Warning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mountain Pacific Bank | $502M | 296% total 444%
|
0.39% | 🔒 |
| Sound Community Bank | $442M | 311% total 378%
|
0.98% | 🔒 |
| Unibank | $181M | 365% total 570%
|
0.81% | 🔒 |
| 1st Security Bank Of Washington | $1.1B | 221% total 268%
|
0.73% | 🔒 |
| Pacific Crest Bank | $183M | 449% total 475%
|
0.62% | 🔒 |
| Wafd Bank | $10.2B | 332% total 373%
|
0.38% | 🔒 |
| Coastal Community Bank | $1.5B | 219% total 295%
|
0.28% | 🔒 |
| Commencement Bank | $321M | 246% total 391%
|
0.00% | 🔒 |
Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA ranks 24 of 275 on strain, with $1.63bn of CMBS maturing across 47 loans against bank room after committed draws of $534.4mm — a wall-to-room ratio of 3.06, versus 1.47 before committed draws are deducted, so the refinancing gap is real but the local capacity question is only partly answerable: 19 qualifying banks is measured against 10 banks_excluded_here, and the exclusion is not flagged as the explanation here, meaning the strain reflects a thin visible lending footprint rather than a demonstrated lack of bank capacity, and the $5.10bn CMBS UPB with an 8.9% distressed share should be weighed alongside the fact that the maturity wall is CMBS only, an upper bound on what these banks would need to absorb.
| REIT | SS NOI | SS Revenue | Occupancy | Rent | As Of |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AVB | — | -0.6% | 95.9% | -0.3% | 2026-07-30 |
| EQR | +0.4% | +2.0% | 96.1% | +2.4% | 2026-04-28 |
| ESS | — | +1.7% | 96.4% | — | 2026-07-30 |
| UDR | +1.9% | +1.9% | 97.3% | +1.7% | 2026-07-27 |
Over the trailing window_days of 365, the on-the-ground reading for Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA shows 70 store_closures and 77 warn_notices affecting 9,436 jobs_affected — a figure that is a floor, since notices stating no headcount are counted but contribute nothing. CRE distress is thinner on this evidence: 1 cre_bankruptcies, though that is a STATE PROXY rather than a metro-native count, so it should not be read as one filing tied to local collateral.