Are banks back in commercial real estate lending? What the county record says (2026)

The Mortgage Bankers Association's second-quarter survey says banks lent 61% more on commercial real estate than a year earlier, and the trade press has been running "banks are back" since spring. Every source for that claim is a survey of lenders or a bank's own balance sheet. The county record is the other witness: every commercial mortgage is recorded, the lender is named on it, and the recording is dated. So on October 22, 2026, we counted every commercial mortgage of $1 million or more recorded in New York City and in Dallas, Tarrant, Collin, Denton, Bexar and Travis counties since January 2024, one row per loan, and typed each lender.

Banks are back on the record too, and the record says where the money came from.

Two in three closings, up from fewer than three in five

Between the second quarter of 2025 and the second quarter of 2026, the last quarter fully recorded in both markets:

By dollars the bank figures rose 56% in New York and 59% in Texas, close to the MBA's 61%, and that closeness is partly luck: dollar shares swing on a handful of large loans each quarter, which is why the chart and the rest of this piece count closings.

The move is not a one-quarter blip. New York's bank share ran between 57% and 61% for six quarters, stepped to 63.6% in the third quarter of 2025 and has held between 62% and 64% since. Texas was already higher and drifted up: 61.7% of closings across 2024, 64.1% across 2025, 66% so far in 2026, with Dallas–Fort Worth at 66.6% and San Antonio at 69.5% in the second quarter against Austin's 59.7%.

Who gave up the share? In New York, agency lenders fell from 3.7% of closings to 1.4%, life companies from 4.3% to 2.7%, and the lenders the record cannot type (an individual, a family LLC, a seller carrying paper) from 13.4% to 10.8%. Debt funds did not give anything up: 13.0% to 15.0%. In Texas the picture is flatter, with debt funds steady near 9%, agency lenders down from 3.0% to 2.2%, and the untyped group still 18%. CMBS is under 2% of closings by count in both markets; conduit loans are few and large, and by dollars they were 4.6% and 5.7% of New York's two quarters.

New York: one bank is most of the move

New York's banks recorded 1,908 commercial mortgages in the first half of 2026 against 1,362 in the first half of 2025. JPMorgan Chase went from 247 to 475, and accounts for 228 of the 546 added, 42% of the whole bank increase. Through October 22 it has 650 recorded closings this year, about $7.9 billion, nearly eight times the next bank. The NYC lender ranking put Chase at one in nine of the city's commercial mortgages over three years; in 2026 it is closer to one in six.

The rest of the rise is a row of banks that were small in New York two years ago, several from across the Hudson:

Webster's 50 closings carried $810 million against $210 million the year before; Ponce's 41, $730 million against $310 million. Both are lending bigger as well as more often.

The banks that recorded fewer: East West Bank, 33 to 13; Ridgewood Savings, 35 to 21; Metropolitan Commercial Bank, 22 to 9; Spencer Savings, 14 to 4; Morgan Stanley Bank, 12 to 5; Citibank, 11 to 7. Citizens (41 to 40) and National Cooperative Bank (43 to 43) held still.

Flagstar, the former New York Community Bank, is the one lender we set aside. Its record shows 100 instruments in the trailing year, and 77 of them were recorded on March 31, 2026: consolidation agreements over small Brooklyn and Bronx apartment buildings, every one restating older New York Community Bank notes. That is a legacy book being re-papered on one day, not 77 loans made, and counting it would have made Flagstar the second most active bank in the city for a quarter. Without that day it recorded 23 in a year, which is the pulling-back our maturity-wall brief described.

Texas: the Texas banks took it, and the merging banks gave it up

Texas's bank closings rose from 1,766 in the first half of 2025 to 2,095 in the first half of 2026, and the gain went to banks headquartered in the state:

SouthState's 82 carried $1.01 billion against $450 million; PNC's 18 carried $1.04 billion against $100 million, the one out-of-state bank on the list lending bigger as well as more often.

The two largest falls are mergers in progress. Veritex Community Bank and Cadence Bank, now both Huntington, recorded 103 deeds of trust in the six counties in the first half of 2025; Huntington recorded 47 in the first half of 2026, with the Cadence merger closing on February 1. Comerica, merged into Fifth Third on the same day, went from 32 to 8, and Fifth Third itself from 11 to 20: 43 closings between them a year ago, 28 now. Regions fell from 33 to 25, First Financial from 17 to 9, Washington Federal from 10 to 2, Bank of America from 36 to 29 and Texas Capital from 16 to 11.

The most active lenders of 2026 so far, all types, are Frost (161 closings, $1.0 billion), SouthState (132, $1.6 billion), Prosperity (101), First United (96) and PlainsCapital (92), then Construction Loan Services, the builder lender, at 73. Wells Fargo (61) and JPMorgan Chase (51) are far down the count and far up the dollars, at $6.9 billion and $7.3 billion. The Texas lender ranking explains why no lender owns Texas the way Chase owns New York.

What the record cannot say

A recorded instrument is a closing, not a dollar of new credit. In New York most refinances are consolidation agreements that restate old notes with some new money, and the record does not separate the two; in Texas a facility secured by several properties records a deed of trust on each, which we collapse to one. The MBA survey counts originations in dollars from the lenders who answer it. The two measures agree on direction and should not be expected to agree on size.

The $1 million floor leaves out the small loans that community banks make most of, so the bank share of all commercial lending is higher than printed here. The untyped group, 11% of New York's closings and 18% of Texas's, is mostly individuals and single-purpose lending LLCs, some of which are private lenders in all but name; a reader who moved them to the debt-fund line would roughly double it in Texas. The third quarter of 2026 is still being recorded in New York (ACRIS indexes weeks late) and the fourth everywhere, so the chart ends at a quarter marked partial. Houston is excluded until its backfill completes in November. And a successor bank takes its predecessor's closings, which is right for Huntington and wrong in one direction for OceanFirst: its count rose from 29 to 52 because Flushing Bank's closings carry its name since June 1, while it sold $1.3 billion of New York multifamily loans on June 29.

Who to call

The lender that closed three deals like yours in your county this year is the one to call, and the county pages list them: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Dallas County, Tarrant, Collin, Denton, Bexar, Travis and Harris, each lender dated to its last closing there, by property type and loan size. The county index lists them all. With a free seat, the lender search takes a county, a property type and a loan size and returns every institution with three or more comparable closings, with its desks and the people on record.