Top economist Mohamed El-Erian warned of looming pain for the commercial real-estate (CRE) industry, with the sector facing "massive" debt refinancings at a time when interest rates are at their highest since 2001.

"If you look at high yield, if you look at commercial real estate, there's massive refinancing needs next year. Massive," the chief economic adviser at Allianz said during a Bloomberg interview. 

"So that's the point of pain which starts to happen," he added. 

The CRE industry has come under mounting stress this year due to a combination of high interest rates, tightening credit conditions, and work-from-home trends that have led to high office vacancies.

The Federal Reserve has raised benchmark rates by more than 500 basis points since early 2022 to tame inflation - the steepest increase since the 1980s.

A measure of US office vacancies recently surpassed highs seen at the peak of the 2008 global financial crisis.

The troubles of the CRE market have prompted some economists to predict the worst is yet to come for the US economy, with one forecasting that some of America's biggest cities face an economic "doom loop" thanks to a collapsing office market. 

"There are things that have to be refinanced in this economy that cannot be refinanced in an orderly fashion at these rates," El-Erian told the outlet.

"Now, some people will tell you there's lots of distressed credit funds with lots of money waiting to come in," he added. "We're going to see a game of chicken between the two."