Smaller Banks Are Stepping Into The CRE Lending Void. For Now The commercial real estate debt market crumpled last year, weighed down by historically aggressive interest rate hikes, but one little-watched corner of the sector has stepped in to partially fill the void. Regional and community banks have grabbed a larger market share of commercial real estate loans as banking giants like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo have retreated from the market. “The local and community banks have really stepped into that space that the debt funds were in before,” said JLL Executive Managing Director Gerard Sansosti, who co-leads the firm's national debt practice. "I don’t think they’re under the same scrutiny that the money center banks are." 
But regional banks, with assets between $10B and $100B, and even smaller community banks can only fill so much of the vacuum, and if the Federal Reserve continues to raise rates, they will start to pull back themselves before too long, experts told Bisnow.“Unless there is more…  Read the full story here. | 
