Commercial real estate bankruptcies and lawsuits, by the numbers.
September 2026: 59 commercial real estate Chapter 11 petitions and 40 CRE-related federal civil suits, newly filed in federal courts nationwide.
Every figure below is computed at build time from Chapter 11 Watch and Federal Lawsuit Watch's own underlying data — the same public CourtListener records, filtered to business debtors and commercial-real-estate-related suits. It is not a count of every CRE bankruptcy or lawsuit nationwide, only of the ones that data source surfaces and this site's scope rules keep (see Coverage and Methodology).
| New York | 21 |
| New Jersey | 11 |
| Florida | 9 |
| Georgia | 7 |
| Michigan | 4 |
| Pennsylvania | 4 |
| Ohio | 4 |
| Louisiana | 3 |
| Maryland | 3 |
| California | 3 |
Top 10 of 28 states and D.C. with at least one filing this month; the rest had one or two each.
| U.S. Bankruptcy Court, E.D. New York | 15 |
| U.S. Bankruptcy Court, D. New Jersey | 10 |
| U.S. Bankruptcy Court, M.D. Florida | 4 |
| U.S. Bankruptcy Court, E.D. Pennsylvania | 3 |
| District Court, N.D. Ohio | 3 |
| District Court, N.D. Georgia | 3 |
| District Court, S.D. New York | 3 |
| U.S. Bankruptcy Court, M.D. Tennessee | 2 |
9 of this month's 99 filings (9%) name a property type directly in the case caption: hospitality — hotel, motel or lodging — in 4, industrial or warehouse in 2, multifamily/apartment in 2, and office in 1.
This is a literal word match on the case name, not a classification of every filing — most captions (an LLC's formal name) don't name a property type at all, so this is a lower bound, not a full breakdown.
October 2026 is still in progress: as of October 13, 51 filings are already on the board (30 Chapter 11 petitions, 21 federal lawsuits) — 52% of September 2026's full-month total. Chapter 11 filings alone rose from 28 in August 2026 to 59 in September 2026.
Figures computed from the live dataset on 2026-10-14.
This report refreshes every time the underlying data changes. For the live, filing-by-filing feed behind these counts, see Chapter 11 Watch and Federal Lawsuit Watch. For the full litigation tracker across state and federal courts, see All Matters.