There is a tidal wave coming. According to a report issued by Deutsche Bank last month, a significant refinancing crisis is about to emerge in commercial real estate. Why? Because “everything financed with debt in 2005, 2006, and 2007 was overvalued and over-leveraged—everything,” says one industry observer. The numbers, indeed, don’t lie: At least two-thirds of the loans maturing between 2009 and 2018 (a whopping $410 billion in debt) is unlikely to qualify for refinancing without significant equity infusions from borrowers, the report found. The most problematic of these loans are the fixed-rate CMBS loans originated between 2005 and 2007.

What does this mean? A lot, as it turns out. Banks and institutional lenders are unable to find creative solutions to this maturing debt tsunami. Some advocate for maturity extensions, but this solution only pushes the problem further down the road, the report adds. So two options remain: 1) Generate sizeable increases in cash flow to offset the declines; or 2) Allow opportunistic buyers to play. Since fundamentals across the country are suffering, the only real avenue is the second. And although there are quite a few distressed asset “wannabes” out there, there are also dozens of heavy hitters who will change the multifamily landscape dramatically over the course of the next few years. The question, then, is what will we look like on the other side? Well, that, it seems, is still anybody’s guess.