Financing
Industrial Property Loans in Illinois
The freight hub of the country, and an owner-user market that runs on community banks. Industrial financing across Illinois, from Cook County manufacturing to the Joliet intermodal corridor.
Everything about Illinois industrial starts with freight. All six Class I railroads in North America serve Chicago, and the CenterPoint complex at Joliet and Elwood is the largest master-planned inland port on the continent at 6,400 acres. Goods that arrive at a West Coast port and need to reach the eastern two thirds of the country come through here.
That reputation describes the big-box half of the market. The loan-level data describes the other half, and they are not the same place. Cook County alone accounts for 115 of the 361 industrial 504 approvals in Illinois. Will County, home of the intermodal terminals, ranks fifth. Those enormous distribution buildings get financed with institutional capital, not owner-user loans. The SBA data is showing you the manufacturers, fabricators and distributors who occupy the older stock inside the metro, and that is a different borrower with a different lender list.
The desk works the whole spread. Bank and SBA debt for the owner-occupant buying the building the business already runs out of, CMBS and life company money for stabilized distribution assets, construction and bridge for everything in between.
Who actually lends on Illinois industrial
These are the banks writing first mortgages on industrial SBA 504 deals approved in Illinois, FY2021 to FY2026, from SBA's public loan-level file: 361 approvals, $725.2M in first mortgages, average about $2.0M. Community banks are hard to survey from the outside. This is the one dataset that names them, deal by deal, with dollars attached.
What this sample is not. SBA 504 requires the borrower to occupy the building, so every row is an owner-user deal: investor-owned industrial is absent, and so is the bank, CMBS, life company and bridge debt that funds most of the market. SBA publishes no property type, so the borrower's industry code stands in for what the loan bought. Rows rank on dollars, so one large deal can sit above a steadier lender. Full method and source.
| # | Lender | First-mortgage $ | Approvals |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Byline Bank | $96.4M | 39 |
| 2 | Old National Bank | $58.2M | 21 |
| 3 | American Commercial Bank and Trust N.A. | $55.5M | 18 |
| 4 | Bank of America, N.A. | $26.6M | 7 |
| 5 | Belmont Bank & Trust Company | $23.9M | 9 |
| 6 | Providence Bank and Trust | $23.8M | 4 |
| 7 | American Community Bank & Trust | $22.9M | 13 |
| 8 | Village Bank and Trust, N.A. | $21.6M | 9 |
| 9 | Busey Bank | $21.4M | 11 |
| 10 | The Huntington National Bank | $16.9M | 4 |
Village Bank and Trust, N.A. is one of twelve separately chartered Wintrust community banks in this data. The other eleven fall below this table, and counted as one group they would rank second in the state.
These institutions appear because SBA published their loans. None is a Janover lending partner and nothing here implies one.
The Illinois lender list is deeper than the ten rows above, and most of it is local. Send us the building and we will find the banks that want it.
Where the deals are
Cook County leads by a wide margin, and every one of the five collar counties follows it into the table below: DuPage, Kane, Lake, Will and McHenry. Winnebago County puts Rockford on the list, so this is not only a Chicago story.
| County | Approvals |
|---|---|
| Cook | 115 |
| DuPage | 60 |
| Kane | 54 |
| Lake | 37 |
| Will | 27 |
| McHenry | 17 |
| Winnebago | 17 |
Top counties shown; the statewide totals above cover every county.
Illinois approvals by fiscal year
| Fiscal year | Approvals | Not yet drawn | First-mortgage $ |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY2021 | 92 | 0 | $133.4M |
| FY2022 | 93 | 8 | $152.0M |
| FY2023 | 54 | 11 | $149.6M |
| FY2024 | 39 | 6 | $91.1M |
| FY2025 | 54 | 20 | $107.4M |
| FY2026 (partial) | 29 | 21 | $91.6M |
FY2026 is partial: the extract runs through 30 June. These are approvals, and 66 of the 361 here have not drawn yet, concentrated in the newest years. Counting only disbursed loans would show a collapse the raw data does not support.
Frequently asked questions
Why do community banks dominate this list instead of the national banks?
Because owner-occupied industrial is their business. The most active first-mortgage lenders on the Illinois deals in this data are Illinois and Midwest banks, not money-center banks, which is the reverse of what the same table shows in California or Florida. That is worth knowing before you start. The bank most likely to want your building may be one you have never heard of, and you find it by running the deal wide instead of starting with your own.
How do Cook County property taxes affect an industrial loan?
More than most borrowers expect, and the mechanism is the reassessment rather than the rate. Cook County reassesses on a three-year cycle, township by township, and commercial and industrial property is assessed at 25 percent of market value. A sale inside that cycle can reset the number the next bill is built on, so the tax line the seller has been paying is not the one you will pay. Lenders underwrite the forward number. If you think the assessment is wrong you get two bites at it, first with the Assessor and then with the Board of Review, but both run on township deadlines that will not wait for your closing.
What about older manufacturing buildings inside the city?
They are financeable, and they come with an environmental file. Long-tenured industrial sites carry use histories a lender will want documented, so budget for a Phase I and for the chance it recommends a Phase II. Illinois has a defined way through: the state EPA's Site Remediation Program ends in a No Further Remediation letter, recorded against the title, and a lender who has seen one before will usually take it. Findings rarely kill a deal. They narrow the lender list and they move the closing date, so raise it early.