The commercial real estate market is performing well under stress due to deep structural demand for well-performing assets across the built environment and the need for comprehensive thermal and electrical management solutions, executives at top service providers and building system manufacturers said during their second-quarter 2026 earnings calls this summer.  

Two key areas of strength underpinning the commercial real estate market are prime office assets and data centers. 

Office leasing activity reached a post-pandemic high, according to JLL. Office-using employment is increasing after hitting a bottom last February, the company said. But quality is key. As office rents for newer and better buildings hit records, “you go half a mile down the road and you have vacant buildings and no one wants to pick up that space,” JLL CEO Christian Ulbrich said on his company’s earnings call. 

Data centers continue to be a market driver, both for development and operational services. For example, data center work now comprises a quarter of Cushman & Wakefield’s integrated facilities management pipeline and the company is pushing to bolster its capabilities to capture more higher-margin technical work, the company’s executives said when releasing their second-quarter results. Similarly, more than half of CBRE’s data center revenue is from downstream work — “managing them, refitting them [and] doing project work,” CEO Bob Sulentic said. 

The segment is also contributing to a surge in revenue for the companies providing all-important thermal management solutions to data centers and other major industrial facilities. Honeywell, Johnson Controls, Schneider Electric and Trane all attributed sales, order and backlog growth to success in data centers, executives said on their earnings calls.

But growth has not been limited to data centers; organizations across industries are spending to improve building capabilities through advanced thermal and electrical management systems.

“This is the age of thermal management,” Johnson Controls CEO Joakim Weidemanis said on his company’s earnings call in July. Johnson Controls operates on a fiscal-year calendar, so its earnings released this summer were for the third quarter. “AI factories, advanced and biopharma manufacturing, large research hospitals and universities require thermal management solutions … at unprecedented scale,” he said. 

Facilities Dive’s coverage of commercial real estate and building systems companies’ most recent earnings releases is below: