Location Strategy Chartbook 05.02.2026

In 2015, the private credit sector was a niche alternative, with about $600 billion in assets under management (AUM). A decade later, it’s a mainstream financing channel—with over $2.5 trillion under management.

After the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, structures called business development companies gained popularity by allowing high net worth retail investors to gain access to private credit. Now these investors are requesting withdrawals of more money than usual, sparking concerns about the sector.

“But this activity is only occurring in one of three main investor channels, retail—not insurance and institutional channels,” explains Amanda Lynam, chief credit strategist for Goldman Sachs Research. “The majority of private credit AUM sits within institutional funds, where periodic investor withdrawals aren’t an option.”

The underlying principles of the private credit asset class are expected to remain intact, Lynam adds, and she expects “that private credit will continue to play an important role in the broader financing ecosystem.”

Brandon Roth, IPA: Capital Provider Overviews

1) Insurance company deploying capital on behalf of their general account, a legacy SMA, and a newly launched $500M stretch senior separate account. 

• Markets: Nationwide, including tertiary markets

• Deal Types: Stabilized and construction-perm

• Loan Sizes: General account: $7M to $95M (SMA goes as low as $3M). New separate account: $10M to $40M.

• Asset Types: MF, student housing, industrial, retail, self-storage, MOB, hotels. Selective on office.

• Leverage: General account: 55-60% LTV. New separate account: 70-75% LTV with a 7.5% debt yield minimum.

• Pricing: General account: T+1.30% to 1.50% (CM1) and T+1.50% to 1.70% (CM2); office above T+2.00%. New separate account: ~T+2.00% (3-5 year), ~T+1.85% (7-15 year), ~T+1.55% (15+ year).

• Duration: 3 to 30 years. 

• Amortization: Full-term IO on new separate account.

• Prepayment: 0.5-1% fee on 3-year loans; no fee for 5 years and longer.

• Competitive Advantages: Tertiary market appetite and smaller loan sizes than most insurance company lenders. The new separate account is a stretch senior perm product (70-75% LTV), which is rare for an insurance balance sheet.

2) This is a new construction and bridge lender founded in mid-2024 that's backed by a large hedge fund.

• Markets: Nationwide; MSAs of 250K+ population

• Deal Types: Bridge and construction.

• Loan Sizes: $15M to $100M; sweet spot $20M to $60M.

• Asset Types: Multifamily, SFR, homebuilder, MHC, land

• Leverage: Up to 70-75% LTC for construction; up to 80% LTV for bridge. Approximately 50% LTV for land.

• Pricing: SOFR+3.25% to 4.25% for bridge; SOFR+4.50% to 5.50% for construction

• Competitive Advantages: They can offer a full-lifecycle loan commitment covering pre-development land financing, vertical construction loan, and lease-up bridge financing. Pricing would step down at TCO and the Sponsor could potentially take cash-out.

• Notes: Closed nearly $3B in their first two years.

3) This is one of the country's most active debt funds.

• Markets: Primary and secondary markets nationwide.

• Deal Types: Bridge loans and light reposition only. No construction. Future funding is available but capped at 20% of the total loan commitment.

• Loan Sizes: $20M and up.

• Asset Types: Multifamily, hotel, industrial, retail, MHC, and age-restricted. No office, no land.

• Leverage: Up to 75% LTV, with exceptions in select circumstances. Deals are typically debt yield constrained with a 7% stabilized DY floor.

• Pricing: SOFR+2.35% floor. Majority of deals price between SOFR+2.50% and SOFR+2.75%.

• Competitive Advantages: Broad asset type coverage including hotel, retail, and MHC, combined with competitive pricing.

4) This is the lending arm of a large NYC-based family office, providing both direct bridge loans and note-on-note financing to first-lien CRE lenders. Note-on-note is 65-70% of their volume.

• Markets: Nationwide. Heavy volume in Tri-state, Florida, and California. Focus on major markets and commuter markets outside major metros.

• Deal Types: Bridge, construction completion, and ground-up construction. Note-on-note financing against first-lien CRE loans. Also starting to originate senior/mezz structures for higher blended yield.

• Loan Sizes: $3M to $50M; most direct deals are $3M to $15M. Will do note-on-note advances as small as $4M.

• Asset Types: Multifamily, mixed-use, condo inventory, retail, industrial, entitled land (selectively, prime locations only), and hospitality without a large F&B component. Selective on office. No senior housing (age-restricted is fine). 

• Leverage: Up to 65% LTV on direct loans. Up to 75-80% advance rate on note-on-note.

• Pricing: SOFR + high 300s to low 400s.

• Recourse: Non-recourse

• Term: 1-3 years. 6-month minimum interest. No exit fee.

• Competitive Advantages: Will do note-on-note advances as small as $4M, which most institutional providers won't match. Quick closes - have funded in two weeks.

• Notes: $300M+ in lender finance investments closed to date across 30+ first-lien lender relationships. ​​

“This is a split-screen economy,” said Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. “AI is doing well and the middle class is squeezed.”

While consumers continue to spend, much of that is tied to spiking gas prices caused by the US-Israel war with Iran. Economists though see a risk of spending declining soon, as rising transport costs further inflame inflation. And the related disruption of fertilizer supply augurs higher grocery bills over time.

That in turn, warns Wells Fargo economist Shannon Grein, will lead to less discretionary spending. Simultaneously, job opportunities have dried up across much of the economy as more companies in the tech and financial sectors engage in mass terminations, a phenomenon increasingly driven by AI.

As the Iran war strangles natural gas supplies, countries across Asia and Africa are rationing fuel and Europe is fretting about winter. But thousands of miles away, in the heart of US shale country, gas is so plentiful that producers now have to pay buyers to take it off their hands.

Drillers in the Permian Basin have helped make the US the world’s largest oil producer. In the process, they’ve also created a glut of natural gas, which is extracted as a byproduct of crude.

There’s so much gas, in fact, that it exceeds available pipeline capacity to ship the fuel to customers or export terminals on the coast. The result: producers literally can’t give it away and prices are actually negative.

The gas bounty is so massive that it’s not only insulating the US from war-driven energy shocks, but offering it an economic edge over countries grappling with fuel shortages.

US manufacturing growth in 2026 has managed to hang on despite war-induced spikes in energy and other input costs. This according to the Institute for Supply Management, a non-governmental organization that reported the US expansion has extended into April.

The news comes despite the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which has disrupted supply chains around the world, driving up the cost of oil and other materials like aluminum and helium. Higher gasoline and diesel prices have also made shipping products more expensive. Thirteen manufacturing industries reported growth in April, led by textile mills, nonmetallic mineral products and primary metals.

The national trend of slower job growth spread to a larger swath of states in February, even as annual employment gains remained positive at 0.1%.

23 states saw higher non-farm payroll employment in February 2026 than in February 2025. States in the South and the Mountain West were the fastest-growing states in terms of job growth. Population growth leaders such as the Carolinas, Arkansas and Utah continued to post above-average job growth, spurred by domestic migration. Nevada was a notable outlier, leading all states with a 2.2% annual job growth rate, well above second-ranked South Carolina and Utah, both at 0.8% and followed by North Carolina, Arkansas and California, all three at 0.7%.

27 states and the District of Columbia are losing jobs over the year. DC experienced a 5.5% annual loss, as cuts to the federal government workforce continued. That was well below neighboring Maryland, which saw the steepest decline among states, down 1.9%. Virginia, the other Washington-D.C.-neighboring state, ranked fourth from the bottom with a 0.9% job loss, just ahead of Iowa’s 1.2% decline.

The impacts of job gains and losses by industry sector varied widely across states, with the education and health services sector gaining jobs in most (the District of Columbia being the only exception).

AI isn’t just a risk to jobs—it also increases the number of jobs in some sectors, according to Goldman Sachs Research.

Our economists find that jobs are being lost in industries and occupations that face a high risk of AI substituting for workers, while employment is increasing in roles where AI is more likely to augment human labor.

Goldman Sachs Research finds that professionals such as telephone operators, insurance claims clerks, and bill collectors face the highest substitution risk. By contrast, roles such as education workers, judges, and construction managers offer the highest AI augmentation potential.

“AI augmentation that makes workers more productive can reduce the number of workers needed to produce a fixed amount of output,” explains Elsie Peng, an economist in Goldman Sachs Research. “But by lowering the cost per unit of output, it might also increase demand for what they produce enough to generate a net increase in their employment.”

The U.S. industrial vacancy rate is expected to stay in the mid‑7% range entering the second quarter of 2026 and edge higher into early 2027 before starting a gradual descent.

While leasing activity for industrial space has held up better than initially expected, the recovery path continues to lengthen as stabilizing demand struggles to fully absorb all of the new space completed since 2022.

That said, moderating new supply expected by early 2027 will probably drive a significant inflection point in vacancy and reaccelerate rent growth later next year.

While national active inventory is still up year-over-year, the pace of growth has slowed in recent months as softening has slowed. National active listings are up +4.6% on a year-over-year basis between April 30, 2025 and April 30, 2026).

But if you go back 12 months, that year-over-year national inventory growth rate was much higher (+30.6%). After a period in which leverage shifted more toward homebuyers, the supply-demand equilibrium in the nationally aggregated housing market has been more stable in recent months.

Nationally, we’re still below pre-pandemic 2019 inventory levels (-11.8% below April 2019) and some resale markets, in particular chunks of the Midwest and Northeast, still remain, relatively speaking, tight-ish.

Active inventory in April 2026 compared to pre-pandemic April 2019:

Southwest —> +23%
West —> +3%
Southeast —> -2%
Midwest —> -35%
Northeast —> -50%

Texas communities will need to spend $174 billion in the next 50 years to avert a severe water crisis, a new state analysis revealed Thursday. That’s more than double the $80 billion projected four years ago, when the Texas Water Development Board last passed a state water plan.

The three-member board presiding over the agency authorized the highly anticipated draft blueprint Thursday, the first administrative step toward adopting the water development board’s plans for the next 50 years. The plan, released every five years, encompasses the projects that 16 regional water planning groups in Texas said are the most urgent, water development board officials said.

The board’s latest estimates come as the state’s water supply faces numerous threats. Growing communities across Texas are scrambling to secure water, keep up with construction costs and cope with a yearslong drought. This week, Corpus Christi officials said the city may be just months away from declaring a water emergency. Meanwhile, other rural cities by the Coastal Bend are rapidly drilling wells to avoid a crisis. Residents in North Texas have also been bracing for groundwater shortages.