ATLANTA—It's no secret that over $300 billion in CMBS loans will need to be refinanced between now and 2017. These are loans that were made at the height of the bubble and the day of reckoning is upon many commercial real estate owners.

What does that mean for commercial real estate in the Southeast cities like Atlanta? Nelwyn Inman, a shareholder at Baker Donaldson who focuses on mortgage lending and servicing, has some ideas.

While delinquencies in all classes of commercial real estate properties decreased during 2014, Inman told us she still sees many borrowers faced with the inability to reposition aging assets. She points to growing demands of new and renewal tenants in multifamily, office, and retail properties as clear reasons why.

What does that mean for 2015? “With maturity defaults increasing,” she says, “we expect this issue to hamper what might otherwise be simple transitions into replacement financing on older properties at a time when the demand for updated space crosses paths with competitive pricing pressures in most secondary and tertiary markets in the southeast."

The race to refinance is officially on. After all, any number of X factors cold cause the market to cool. Industry watchers report several reasons developers and owners are working fast to lock in favorable loan rates. There's the relaxed set of underwriting standards, the mass capital chasing deals, and, of course, the historical low interest rates.