The commercial real estate industry has been on the edge of its seat waiting for a wave of distressed deals to hit the market. To be sure, distress has been rising, as recent figures by MSCI show. But does it qualify as a wave? Some experts say no.

"I think a lot of investors are still anxiously waiting for the flood of distressed deals," said Marcus & Millichap SVP of research services John Chang in a research video. "They see it as an opportunity to acquire properties for pennies on the dollar, but I don't think an opportunity of that magnitude will emerge."

Much of the chatter about distressed property deals is based on a recently discussed statistic that multifamily distress has tripled, which is true, noted Chang. Looking at the underlying data, multifamily distress has climbed from 2.6% in January to 7.4% in June.