Net Lease Cap Rate Report

By ANL Research · August 2026

Where the market is priced

Twelve retail sectors, 872 live listings, and a 169 basis point range from the tightest to the widest.

The table below is the whole live book, grouped by sector. Every asking cap rate in it is stated by the listing broker; none are derived or estimated by us. Read the middle-50% column alongside the average — it is usually the more useful number, because it tells you how much agreement there is behind the average.

Sector	Listings	Average	Median	Middle 50%	Avg term
Bank / Financial	11	4.96%	4.75%	4.61 – 5.25%	13.5 yrs
Fast Casual	59	5.18%	5.00%	4.75 – 5.50%	14.8 yrs
Gas & Convenience	115	5.23%	5.00%	4.85 – 5.25%	15.3 yrs
QSR	305	5.39%	5.50%	4.70 – 6.00%	14.9 yrs
Casual Dining	33	5.62%	5.65%	5.25 – 6.00%	10.8 yrs
Automotive	162	6.03%	6.00%	5.50 – 6.65%	13.7 yrs
Medical / Healthcare	27	6.10%	5.75%	5.50 – 6.76%	9.1 yrs
Pharmacy	16	6.14%	6.00%	5.73 – 6.39%	12.4 yrs
Big Box	19	6.17%	6.15%	5.70 – 6.93%	10.2 yrs
Other Retail	9	6.21%	6.15%	5.85 – 6.75%	11.6 yrs
Grocery	15	6.31%	6.50%	5.83 – 7.00%	11.0 yrs
Dollar / Discount	59	6.65%	6.50%	6.33 – 6.76%	11.3 yrs
Unclassified	42	6.24%	6.25%	5.78 – 7.00%	10.1 yrs

Average term is computed only on listings with a stated remaining term. Sectors under twenty listings should be read as directional.

The ranking is not a credit ranking. Gas & Convenience asks 5.23% on a 15.3-year average term; Medical asks 6.10% on 9.1 years. Most of what looks like a sector preference is a duration difference wearing a sector label.

What the dirt is worth

The cleanest number in this report is the ground-lease premium, because it is the one comparison where duration holds still. Ground-lease and fee-simple listings in our book carry an identical 15.0-year average remaining term. They ask 112 basis points apart.

Tenure	Listings	Average ask	Avg term
Ground lease	66	4.93%	15.0 yrs
Fee simple	151	6.05%	15.0 yrs
Leasehold	7	6.07%	17.2 yrs
Not stated	648	5.67%	13.7 yrs

112 basis points is what buyers pay to own land and not a building. Take a three million dollar fee-simple deal at 6.05%; the same net operating income priced as a ground lease at 4.93% is worth about $3.68 million — some $680,000 more for the identical rent cheque. What they are buying is the absence of a roof, a parking lot, and an HVAC system, and a residual that is land rather than a depreciating box. Whether that is worth 112 basis points is the single most consequential underwriting question in this asset class, and it is one almost nobody asks explicitly.

Tenure is stated on 224 of 872 listings. The comparison above rests on those; the 648 unstated listings are shown for completeness only.

The price-band curve

Pricing by deal size is not a straight line, and the shape tells you where the competition is.

Asking price	Listings	Average ask	Avg term
Under $1.5M	75	6.42%	11.3 yrs
$1.5M – $3M	385	5.86%	13.6 yrs
$3M – $5M	273	5.30%	13.9 yrs
$5M – $10M	120	5.51%	14.8 yrs
$10M and above	19	5.71%	14.5 yrs

The tightest money in this market is the $3–5M band at 5.30%, and pricing widens in both directions from there — 112 basis points as you go down, 41 as you go up. That is not a risk curve. It is a map of where the buyers are.

The $3–5M band is the heart of the 1031 exchange market: large enough to absorb a meaningful gain, small enough to close all-cash inside a 45-day clock. Below $1.5M the exchange buyer is largely absent and the term profile is materially shorter at 11.3 years. Above $10M you are bidding against institutions, but with far fewer competitors per deal.

Lease term, and how unevenly it is paid for

Term is the most reliable single predictor of price in this book, and the market does not pay for it evenly.

Remaining term	Listings	Average ask	Middle 50%	Step
Under 5 years	47	6.72%	6.00 – 7.80%	—
5 to 10 years	134	6.13%	5.50 – 6.83%	−59 bps
10 to 15 years	280	5.67%	5.14 – 6.15%	−46 bps
15 years or more	411	5.42%	4.75 – 6.00%	−25 bps

Each step up the ladder is worth less than the one below it: 59 basis points, then 46, then 25. What buyers are paying to escape is not short duration but re-leasing risk, and once that risk is priced out the additional years are close to free. The practical consequence is that a buyer with a seven-year hold is systematically overpaying if they insist on twenty years of term.

All 872 live listings appear in the table above. An earlier version banded only the 651 whose remaining term the listing broker states directly, and carried the other 221 in a separate “Not stated” row — which was the wrong description twice over. Their term is not unknown: it is computed from the stated lease expiration date, which is the more precise of the two sources. Holding them outside the bands understated the long end and widened the spread to 152 basis points against the 130 the full book actually shows.

How to read a sector average without being misled

Three cautions, each of which we apply to our own numbers.

A sector average is mostly a term average. Sectors with long leases price tight and sectors with short leases price wide, and the sector label gets the credit. Before concluding that the market prefers gas stations to medical, check that gas stations in this book carry 15.3 years against medical’s 9.1.

A sector average is also a tenant-mix average. Our QSR sector average is 5.39%. The tenants inside it range from 3.89% to 7.10% — a 321 basis point spread. No single asset in that sector is well described by 5.39%, and a portfolio built to that number would be a collection of accidents.

Dispersion is information, not noise. Where the middle 50% is wide, the market has not settled on a price and underwriting is rewarded. Where it is narrow, you are buying a commodity and should compete on execution rather than analysis. Gas & Convenience has the narrowest band in the table at 40 basis points; the under-five-year term band has the widest at 180.

What we would do with this

One. Price the tenure decision explicitly. 112 basis points is a large, specific number, and most buyers absorb it without ever writing it down. If you are paying it, be able to say what the land residual is worth to you at exit.

Two. Know which side of $3–5M you are shopping. You are paid 112 basis points to go below the exchange band and 41 to go above it. Both are real yields available for accepting a thinner buyer pool at resale — which is a liquidity decision, not a credit one.

Three. Buy the tenant and the term. The sector is a filing convention. Nothing in this report supports choosing an asset by sector. The sector tables exist to show you how little the sector explains.

Methodology

Built from the live inventory in the American Net Lease database as of August 15, 2026: 872 active single-tenant listings across 213 tracked tenants, every one carrying an asking cap rate stated by the listing broker. Duplicate and withdrawn listings are excluded. No cap rate here is derived, imputed, or estimated by us — where a broker did not state one, the listing is excluded rather than filled in.

These are asking cap rates, not closed transactions. We are reporting what sellers are asking, not what buyers paid. We hold no verified closed-transaction dataset today, and nothing in this report should be read as a transaction comp. Where we compare against national figures we compare asking to asking.

Not every field is stated on every listing. Remaining term is stated on 651 of 872 listings and tenure on 224. Each table names its own denominator; cuts built on fewer than twenty listings are flagged as directional in the text. We would rather show a thin sample and say so than quietly drop it.

Nothing here is investment advice. Investors evaluating a specific asset should verify current pricing and tenant credit independently. Every figure in this report is reproducible from our database on request.

ANL Research publishes a market note every Monday. American Net Lease represents buyers of single-tenant net lease retail.