As 2025 draws to a close, two themes are top of mind for Caliber and our leadership team: the emergence of a new real estate cycle and the modernization of finance through blockchain. Both trends are shaping how we’re positioning Caliber’s clients and shareholders for 2026 and beyond.
Real estate has entered a new cycle
Commercial real estate has officially moved into a new cycle—marked by a rapid correction, clear trough, and early signs of recovery.
Shown below is Green Street’s commercial property price index, which is an aggregation of values of retail, apartments, healthcare, industrial, office, hospitality, data center, self-storage, net lease, and manufactured housing real estate nationwide, over the 2000-2025 period. The index shows that commercial real estate prices hit all-time highs in May 2022, fueled by capital from the baby boomer generation seeking passive income in retirement, combined with historically low interest rates.
From May 2022 through September 2024, values fell sharply across every major real estate asset class, with the largest declines being felt by office, multifamily, and industrial real estate in that order. The speed and scale of the decline were strikingly similar to the 2008 financial crisis, when prices peaked in late 2007 and bottomed approximately two years later in 2009. Not surprisingly, this rapid decline was also fueled by cheap, easy credit and a booming and relatively unregulated securitization market.
Caliber’s founders did their first deal in late 2008, with 2009 serving as our first full year in business together. During that time, the price data we had access to told us the bottom had already occurred, well before mainstream news headlines caught up—and we believe the same dynamic is playing out in real time from September 2024 to today. After the 2008 financial crisis, the best buying window proved to be from 2009 to 2012. We believe that window reopened in September 2024, and we will see a similar dynamic from 2025 to 2027.
The key point: Commercial real estate values drop quickly, market perception changes quickly, but the actual access to buy discounted assets takes time to materialize, often after investors have mentally moved on from the real estate narrative. They come back into the fold, but often late, when the headlines catch up and when it is again an “obvious” good time to buy.
We have now reached that point in the cycle where the price reset and the market mechanics finally converge. Owners who bought at peak valuations know their assets are no longer worth what they were and know there will not be a rapid decline in interest rates any time soon.
Their cash reserves are thinning. Banks – governed by regulators – are pressing for resolution and are no longer willing or able to wait. Refinancing often requires writing large “cash-in” equity checks that many investors would rather avoid, or simply cannot fund. The result is an environment in which assets must be sold, and that forced-sale dynamic is exactly what creates today’s buying window.
How this cycle differs from 2008
While the magnitude and speed of the price decline for commercial real estate mirrors the financial crisis, the underlying drivers are different. In 2008, everything crashed: residential first, then commercial. This time, however, commercial real estate absorbed the majority of the correction, while residential values have stayed near their highs. One of two things will happen from here: either residential prices eventually reconnect with gravity, or interest rates fall quickly enough to support current valuations. In either scenario, the relative value equation favors reallocating from single-family residential assets—where many investors are sitting on significant gains—into discounted commercial real estate.
Another major difference is the level of industry sophistication. In 2008, banks had no infrastructure, no teams, and no software to process large volumes of distressed assets. Today they do. That means the distressed assets will be worked through more efficiently, and most likely in private transactions, benefitting incumbents with track records, certainty of execution, and proven ability to close complex deals. Investors choosing sponsors in this cycle should look closely at experience—specifically, how a manager performed in its worst deals, not just its best ones, and how a manager has demonstrated an ability to win competitive bids for distressed property.
In real life, distress = problems. In real estate investing, distress = discount = a safer opportunity to generate a return on investment and a wider margin of error.
The opportunity in 2026
The combination of price resets, motivated sellers, maturing debt, and regulatory pressure has brought the market to a moment that rarely appears: a reset of values across office, multifamily, industrial, and hotels, trading at discounts deep enough to compare to 2008 but with more tools and clarity available to those who know how to navigate it. We believe we’re at the starting line of a new race, and this is the moment to get invested before the market moves.
Importantly, this is true for existing assets as well as developments that were caught midstream in their business plan during the 2022-2024 era.
As traditional and decentralized finance converge, tokenization of real-world assets is rapidly approaching
At the same time that real estate is entering a new cycle, the global financial system is being rebuilt for the first time in 50-100 years at this scale. Traditional finance (TradFi) and blockchain-powered decentralized finance (DeFi) are merging, and before long we will stop talking about them as separate worlds—it will all simply be finance, running in part on blockchain infrastructure.
This mega trend in finance has been commented on in recent months by heads of major financial institutions, such as Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, Larry Fink, CEO of Blackrock, and scores of their peers. It has also received validation from the federal government, through Secretary of Treasury, Scott Bessent, and Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, along with many prominent senators and congressmen.
For nearly a decade, many hundreds of billions of dollars have been invested in blockchain-centric companies and technologies designed to function together to create a new internet—not the internet of information that we are all well aware of today, but rather an internet of “value.” Said another way, these technologies allow anything of value to become portable and usable in new ways.
Simple example of the internet of value in action
Let’s consider an example starting with a home worth $1 million and a planned $200,000 renovation by the homeowner. The average American seeking to renovate their home most likely will tap a home equity line of credit (HELOC), borrow more money, renovate the property, and enjoy yet another monthly payment. The homeowner’s debt burden grows, and, presumably, the value of their home grows, which they may realize many years later when the home is sold or passed down through the family.
If, instead, that home was, utilizing blockchain technology, placed into the new internet of value, the homeowner could choose an alternative path. Rather than take on another ~$1,000 per month in payments, the homeowner could choose to sell 20% of their $1 million home. The buyer would then be entitled to 20% of the home, any rents it produces, any future refinance proceeds, and any sale proceeds, all managed digitally with no friction and fees. That $200,000 could certainly come from a single investor, or it could come from 20,000 investors (aka token holders) who throw $10 into the asset instead of buying a Starbucks drink.
Blockchain technology can power this exact transaction, valuing the home each day seamlessly and ensuring all parties get what they expect, with transparency and security. Even the completion of the renovation can be verified on the blockchain, ensuring the homeowner doesn’t take the money and head off on elaborate vacations rather than improving the asset.
The homeowner gets their renovation without taking on a payment and the investors get an asset that just got a minimum of a 20% valuation gain.
How TradFi and DeFi come together
What most of us know about DeFi—primarily the names of a few tokens like Ethereum and Solana, and the incredible wealth creation (and destruction) stories of Bitcoin millionaires—represents very little of what is to come in the new internet of value. Evaluating this financial revolution today by looking only at the public blockchain projects mentioned in this paragraph is analogous to the early days of the information internet we already know, when we all used to believe the “internet” was the same thing as “email.”
Looking back on those days makes those of us old enough to remember laugh. Who would have believed that email was a very small part of what the internet eventually became? Who would have believed we would find ourselves in a time when our food, clothing, furniture, kids, schools, businesses, and personal relationships would all run online?
Similarly, for TradFi and DeFi to converge, the internet of value must evolve beyond public blockchains—or its early email-like tech—to the next level.
That convergence requires a kind of “glue” layer between existing financial systems and public blockchains. Data, value, and ownership records need to move securely between banks, asset managers, exchanges, and on-chain environments. In our view, the firms providing this connective infrastructure will be the “picks and shovels” of the next era of finance.
Caliber believes we have found the dominant player in providing the “glue” or infrastructure necessary to connect TradFi and DeFi and to digitize finance, and we have begun investing into this future. The company is called Chainlink, and its token is called LINK.
Chainlink specifically helps companies like Mastercard, JP Morgan, SWIFT, UBS, and countless others connect their traditional systems and private blockchain products with the public blockchains and infrastructure of DeFi. To continue our internet analogy, Chainlink provides the “TCP/IP” protocols for the internet of value. In our view, it is to the digitization of finance what Amazon is to ecommerce.
Tokenization of real-wrold assets
A central part of this shift is the tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs), including private equity real estate funds, stocks, bonds, money market funds, bank deposits, etc. The tokenization process makes the asset and the ownership of it “digital.”
The value of tokenization is vast. A simple example could be that a tokenized real estate investment may offer secondary liquidity, i.e., you can sell your share of a real estate asset or fund to someone else, similar to how you can sell a stock to someone else. Another example: a tokenized public stock, such as Caliber’s stock, could be purchased by any investor in the world, without having to open a US brokerage account, vastly increasing worldwide access.
Technologically speaking, the ability to tokenize is already here. In fact, many asset managers and banks are starting to tokenize deposits and liquid assets, such as money market funds. In real estate, through this technology we can create digital representations of fund interests and underlying properties, move them on-chain, and automate many of the processes around them. What’s still catching up are the regulatory frameworks, transfer-agent models, and investor onboarding processes that make this work at scale.
Momentum is building quickly. In just the last several months, some of the largest asset managers, exchanges, and banks in the US have begun tokenizing a wide range of instruments: stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and more. Inside the DeFi community, the conversation is increasingly turning toward the next frontier: tokenizing private funds and real estate. That is where we expect to see some of the most meaningful changes over the coming years.
Why does tokenization matter for real estate investors?
- Stronger primary capital formation. A compelling real estate project, offered in tokenized form, can potentially reach a broader investor base, raise capital faster, and do so at more attractive pricing.
- Secondary liquidity. Instead of relying solely on manager-driven exits or redemption programs, investors in a tokenized fund may be able to sell their interests in secondary venues, on their own timeline.
- Better operations. Tokenized funds can run more efficiently on modern rails, improving administration and reporting, automating valuations, and improving the flow of data between assets, managers, and investors.
For a historically illiquid, operationally complex asset class like private real estate, these are not incremental upgrades; they represent a fundamental modernization.
As more of finance moves onto blockchain rails, we view positioning around this infrastructure—and around the tokenization of real estate funds and assets in particular—as a strategic way to participate in the long-term shift from traditional to digital finance.
Caliber is building, running, and growing real estate funds designed to capture the market opportunity we see in real estate today.
Caliber is investing in LINK and deepening our knowledge of RWA tokenization and how our real estate assets and funds can benefit from this evolution in finance.
While value can be created in both real and digital assets, we suspect there may be a greater unlock in the convergence of the two, which is why Caliber presents itself as the venue to invest in Real + Digital Asset Infrastructure.
Investors may participate with Caliber via our public equity, Nasdaq: CWD, or via our private equity real estate fund investments. To learn more about Caliber’s strategies and upcoming investment opportunities for 2026, we invite you to book an appointment or sign up for our mailing list below to follow along with our news.
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About Caliber (CaliberCos Inc.) (NASDAQ: CWD)
Caliber (Nasdaq: CWD) is a diversified alternative asset manager with over $2.9 billion in Managed Assets. For more than 16 years, Caliber has delivered value across market cycles with its private equity real estate investment platform, specializing in hospitality, multi-family residential, and industrial real estate. In 2025, Caliber launched a Digital Asset Treasury strategy anchored in Chainlink (LINK). This initiative bridges real and digital asset investing, offering investors access through both publicly traded equity (Nasdaq: CWD) and Caliber’s private equity real estate funds.
Investor Considerations
The information contained herein is general in nature and is not intended, and should not be construed, as accounting, financial, investment, legal, or tax advice, or opinion, in each instance provided by Caliber or any of its affiliates, agents, or representatives. The reader is cautioned that this material may not be applicable to, or suitable for, the reader’s specific circumstances, desires, needs, and requires consideration of all applicable facts and circumstances. The reader understands and acknowledges that, prior to taking any action relating to this material, the reader (i) has been encouraged to rely upon the advice of the reader’s accounting, financial, investment, legal, and tax advisers with respect to the accounting, financial, investment, legal, tax, and other considerations relating to this material, (ii) is not relying upon Caliber or any of its affiliates, agents, employees, managers, members, or representatives for accounting, financial, investment, legal, tax, or business advice, and (iii) has sought independent accounting, financial, investment, legal, tax, and business advice relating to this material. Caliber, and each of its affiliates, agents, employees, managers, members, and representatives assumes no obligation to inform the reader of any change in the law or other factors that could affect the information contained herein.
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