Financing
Industrial Property Loans in Texas
Dallas-Fort Worth big-box, the Houston port and petrochemical corridor, and the manufacturing triangle in between. Industrial financing across Texas, sized across the whole lender market at once.
Texas industrial runs on two engines. Dallas-Fort Worth is one of the largest big-box distribution markets in the country, and Houston pairs a deep-water port with the petrochemical corridor that runs along the Gulf. Add San Antonio and Austin and you get the triangle where most of the state's manufacturing and logistics space gets built, leased and financed.
The buildings here are big, and the loans follow. In SBA's loan-level data the average industrial first-mortgage approval in Texas runs about $3.0 million. Harris County leads the state in deal count. The desk places bank debt, SBA for owner-users, CMBS and life company money for stabilized assets, and bridge for everything mid-story.
One Texas particular: Houston has no zoning. That does not make underwriting looser. With no zoning map to protect use, lenders look harder at what surrounds the property and what the building would re-lease or resell as. It is a solvable question, and the lenders who know Houston already have a view on it. Part of the job is putting your deal in front of those lenders instead of the ones who will study it for six weeks first.
Who actually lends on Texas industrial
These are the banks writing first mortgages on industrial SBA 504 deals approved in Texas, FY2021 to FY2026, from SBA's public loan-level file: 190 approvals, $573.6M in first mortgages, average about $3.0M. SBA is one lane of several here. It is also the lane with public loan-level data, so it is the cleanest read on which banks actually show up for Texas industrial deals.
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 | Bank of America, N.A. | $57.1M | 12 |
| 2 | Vantage Bank Texas | $43.6M | 7 |
| 3 | Stellar Bank | $34.5M | 8 |
| 4 | Prosperity Bank | $32.0M | 12 |
| 5 | First Financial Bank | $22.4M | 3 |
| 6 | Fifth Third Bank | $19.7M | 6 |
| 7 | Truist Bank | $17.7M | 4 |
| 8 | Zions Bank | $16.7M | 8 |
| 9 | First United Bank and Trust Company | $15.0M | 3 |
| 10 | Firstbank Southwest | $14.6M | 1 |
These institutions appear because SBA published their loans. None is a Janover lending partner and nothing here implies one.
A Houston or DFW building usually has more than one execution available to it. Tell us about yours and we will run it wide.
Where the deals are
Harris County (Houston) and the DFW counties dominate the approval count, with Travis, Webb and Montgomery behind them. The numbers below are the most active counties in SBA's loan-level file for industrial-NAICS borrowers, cancelled approvals removed.
| County | Approvals |
|---|---|
| Harris | 34 |
| Dallas | 20 |
| Tarrant | 15 |
| Travis | 11 |
| Webb | 10 |
| Montgomery | 7 |
| Denton | 6 |
| Brazos | 6 |
Top counties shown; the statewide totals above cover every county.
Texas approvals by fiscal year
| Fiscal year | Approvals | Not yet drawn | First-mortgage $ |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY2021 | 41 | 0 | $98.4M |
| FY2022 | 42 | 3 | $97.4M |
| FY2023 | 28 | 4 | $76.4M |
| FY2024 | 27 | 8 | $95.7M |
| FY2025 | 32 | 14 | $130.0M |
| FY2026 (partial) | 20 | 13 | $75.8M |
FY2026 is partial: the extract runs through 30 June. These are approvals, and 42 of the 190 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
Does Houston's lack of zoning change how deals get underwritten?
It changes emphasis. Lenders substitute their own use analysis for the zoning map: surrounding uses, drainage, deed restrictions and resale profile get more attention than they would in a zoned market. Local lenders have this priced. Out-of-market lenders sometimes do not. We route accordingly.
Can you finance industrial land in Texas?
Yes, though land is its own credit conversation: lower leverage, recourse more common, and the story matters: entitlements, utilities, a path to vertical. Land near active logistics corridors places much more easily than raw acreage.
Do you work deals outside the big four metros?
Yes. El Paso, the Valley, Lubbock, Corpus Christi. Secondary-market industrial in Texas trades on the same fundamentals; the lender list is just shorter, which is an argument for seeing all of it at once rather than calling banks one by one.