Week ending October 23, 2026: the 10-year slips to 5.00%

The 10-year Treasury closed the week at 5.00%, down 9 bp from 5.09% the Friday before. Thursday alone took it down 17 bp, from 5.13% to 4.96%, before a 4 bp bounce on Friday. It’s up from 4.79% on September 1 and down from its 5.31% peak on October 5.

Most permanent loans price as a spread over the Treasury that matches their term, so a borrower who locked on Thursday instead of Wednesday got roughly 17 bp off the base rate before any lender changed its spread.

Short rates didn’t move. SOFR sat between 3.87% and 3.90% all week (3.90% on Thursday, the latest reading). SOFR at 3.90% sits about 110 bp under the 10-year, so floating-rate debt still starts cheaper than fixed. CBRE said in its Q2 lending release that the gap was pushing borrowers toward floating-rate loans.

Residential mortgage rates eased a little. Freddie Mac’s 30-year average was 7.32% on Thursday, down from 7.40% the two weeks before. It was 6.71% on September 3. We show it for context only; it’s a residential rate, not a commercial one.

CMBS delinquency edged up. KBRA’s September read put 30-day-plus delinquency on the CMBS it rates at 7.7%, up from 7.6% in August, while its distress rate eased 4 bp to 10.3%. Bank CRE loans are a different picture: 1.53% delinquent in Q2 on the Fed’s numbers. Q3 bank figures should arrive in late November.

Prices are holding, barely. Green Street’s index slipped 0.1% in September and is up 4.7% from a year earlier. “If this rise in yields sticks, property prices are likely to go down,” Green Street’s Peter Rothemund said in the October 6 release.

Coming up: the Fed’s next rate decision on October 28, after September’s quarter-point increase to 3.75% to 4.00%, its first since 2023. Then KBRA’s October CMBS figures and the Fed’s October loan officer survey, both expected in early November.