Real estate loans.(Focus: Finance)

Crain's Chicago Business, July, 2007 by Stainburn, Samantha

Byline: Samantha Stainburn A business, naturally, needs space to operate. And that comes at a cost. Here's the lowdown on the shifting landscape of real estate financing. The service: Banks offer commercial mortgages and construction loans to business owners who want to own or renovate the space they occupy, as well as to builders and developers.

Banks finance commercial mortgages at both fixed and floating rates of interest, though they most commonly make shorter-term, floating-rate loans. Where else you can get it: Wall Street firms make commercial real estate loans that they group into portfolios and sell on the commercial mortgage-backed securities market. These so-called "conduit lenders'' typically offer longer-term, fixed-rate mortgages with...