November 2026 · Capital

The buyer mix moved. The IG supply didn’t.

Single-tenant net lease traded $51 billion across industrial, office and retail in 2025, up 16%, per CBRE.

→ Private buyers went from 43% of volume to 55% in a year, per Northmarq. REITs fell to 8% from 17%; institutions held a fifth. In 2026 H1 institutions rose to 22% and cross-border to 14%; industrial was 31% through September.

Exhibit: share of single-tenant net lease volume by buyer type, 2024, 2025 and the first half of 2026. Private 43%, 55%, 48%; institutional 18%, 19%, 22%; cross-border 11%, 9%, 14%; REITs 17%, 8%, 8%; users and other 11%, 10%, 9%. Source: Northmarq.

→ More private money arrives on a 1031 clock. DST equity, which I charted in October, rose 49% in 2025 to $8.4 billion per Mountain Dell Consulting, heading for a record $10 billion; it wants IG credit on a long lease.

→ The dedicated IG money had a record year; Blue Owl raised $6.5 billion for net lease in 2025. In 2026 TPG Angelo Gordon passed $1 billion on its fifth net lease fund and CBRE Investment Management bought a $1.6 billion portfolio to seed one.

→ The IG product is thin: The Boulder Group puts IG tenants with long-term leases at under 10% of retail deals on the market.

So one thin slice, IG credit on a long lease, is pulled two ways: tax-motivated capital that now prefers it to multifamily (industrial 39% of DST equity through September, multifamily 22%, per Mountain Dell), and institutional and core funds that require it. Neither can buy what isn’t for sale. The other nine-tenths, below IG or short on term, is where most of the market trades and neither pool goes.

Exhibit: industrial net lease in four cells by tenant credit grade and remaining lease term, long meaning 15 or more years left and short under 10. Investment grade with a long lease is the scarce cell, under 10% of marketed deals, wanted by DST, investment-grade and core fund capital: high 6s to low 7s built or bought direct, 5 to 6 on the sale to 1031 and DST buyers. Investment grade with a short lease: the same tenant, wider for term than the grade is worth; rollover buyers and the REITs that re-lease. Below investment grade with a long lease: low to mid 7s, the 8s under $50 million of tenant revenue; credit underwriters, where most manufacturing build-to-suits land. Below investment grade with a short lease: priced on the box, value-add and private buyers. Levels are my read of deals in the market, third quarter into early fourth 2026; no broker publishes industrial by grade and term. Unrated tenants price on implied credit.

Surveys split by sector and term, not grade. Boulder’s tenant profiles do both, for retail, restaurant and bank tenants; term matters more: the median IG tenant asks 5.50% at fifteen years and 6.75% at five; below IG asks 5.85% at fifteen. Term is worth 125 basis points, the grade about 35.

Nobody publishes this cut for industrial. On long leases I see high 6s to low 7s for IG, low to mid 7s below IG, and the 8s under $50 million of revenue. Boulder’s retail book is tighter: 1031 and DST pools buy it, and its asks lag the higher-rate market.

Those pools still take stabilized long-lease IG industrial at 5 to 6 caps, Q3 into early Q4; that spread is the exit. The market already prices the term. What it can’t find enough of is the IG credit.

If it isn’t on the market, where does the next IG deal come from?

Mostly from a build-to-suit, or from the company that owns it in a sale-leaseback.

Both differ from buying existing net lease: the first call goes to whoever is at the table before the lease is signed, the tenant, its rep, the developer or the acquirer, not the broker.

The risks are construction and term, not price. Construction risk is real; so are the guardrails, which cover most of it. The exit is the buyer who wanted IG credit all along: build it, season it, and 1031, DST and core money takes it out.

Lease restructures, CTL sponsors, developers who can’t extend and take-privates like Blue Owl and Sila Realty Trust are the other doors; a note of their own.

Exhibit: IG deals are built, or bought from the owner. Three ways to an investment-grade tenant on a long lease. Buying existing: the broker makes the first call, you price the deal as marketed, IG supply is under 10% of marketed deals, the exit is the next marketed deal. Build-to-suit: the tenant, its rep or the developer calls before the lease is signed, you price construction and term, this is where new IG supply gets made, the exit is 1031 and DST money, and net lease and core funds if the credit is investment grade. Sale-leaseback: the company, its advisor or the M&A acquirer calls, you price the credit and the residual, the supply is what the company chooses to sell, the exit is the same buyers.

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