The short answer
Start with four facts from public filings: whether the bank is large enough to hold the loan, whether it already holds loans of that kind, what size its loans usually are, and where it lends. Use them to cut the list to a handful, then call. The filings show what a bank holds and has made. They do not show what it wants today, its pricing or its terms.
The steps in short
- Write the loan in one line. Kind of loan, purpose, amount and place. For example: owner-occupied purchase, $4,000,000, Franklin County, Ohio.
- Cut by size. Keep banks whose estimated largest single loan is comfortably above your amount. A loan near a bank's ceiling is a harder ask.
- Sort by the book that fits. Sort the remaining banks by the balance they hold in your kind of loan. A bank that holds none is unlikely to start with yours.
- Check loan size and footprint. Read the loan size lines and the branch footprint. Keep banks that lend at your size and in your market.
- Read one page in full. Open each short-listed bank's page and read the capacity block and its captions before you call.
- Call and ask three questions. Ask whether the bank is adding loans of this kind, what size it likes, and what it would need to see first.
The method in one paragraph
Write the loan in one line. Cut the list of banks by size, so that every bank left is able to hold the loan. Sort what is left by how much of that kind of loan each bank already holds. Check loan size and footprint. Read the few pages that survive, then call. Each step uses a public filing, and each filing has a limit you should know before you lean on it.
There are 4,313 FDIC institution record, banks on this site. The goal is to get from that number to five or six.
Signal one: is the bank large enough?
A bank cannot lend an unlimited amount to one borrower. For national banks the rule is 12 CFR 32.3: total loans to one borrower may not exceed 15 percent of the bank’s capital and surplus, plus a further 10 percent when the added amount is fully secured by readily marketable collateral. State-chartered banks follow their state’s limit. The legal lending limit guide walks through the rule.
A lender page here prints an estimated largest single loan. It is 15 percent of tier 1 capital plus the allowance, taken from the call report. That is our calculation. It is not the regulation’s “capital and surplus”, it is not a state limit, and it is not a figure the bank has stated. Most banks also set a house limit below the legal one.
How to use it: treat the estimate as a ceiling the bank will rarely go near. A request at 90 percent of the estimate is a request for the largest loan the bank could make to anyone. A request at 20 or 30 percent is ordinary business. There is no published rule for where “comfortable” starts, so ask.
Signal two: does it already hold loans like this?
The call report lists a bank’s loans by kind. Schedule RC-C, Part I, item 1 splits real estate loans into construction and land (1.a), farmland (1.b), 1-4 family (1.c), multifamily (1.d) and nonfarm nonresidential (1.e). Item 1.e is split again into loans on owner-occupied properties (1.e.(1)) and loans on other nonfarm nonresidential properties (1.e.(2)). That last split is the one that separates a loan to a business on its own building from a loan to an investor.
| Kind of loan | Banks and savings institutions | Credit unions |
|---|---|---|
| Multifamily | $670B | $48.0B |
| Construction and land development | $459B | $11.1B |
| Owner-occupied commercial real estate | $711B | $39.6B |
| Non-owner-occupied commercial real estate | $1.23T | $87.9B |
| Farmland | $124B | $3.32B |
| Commercial and industrial | $2.62T | $11.8B |
FDIC call reports and NCUA 5300, Balances held, not loans made. A call report cannot say when a loan was made.
Two cautions. These are balances held on the report date, not loans made in the period. A bank can hold a large book and be adding nothing to it. And a bank that sells most of what it makes will show a small book.
Sort by the book that fits your loan. For an owner-occupied building that is the owner-occupied book, which is $751B FDIC call reports and NCUA 5300, across all lenders here.
Signal three: what size are its loans?
Three files speak to loan size, each for a different kind of loan.
Bank call reports. Banks report their loans to small businesses by original amount. This site reads those lines to show how much of a bank’s commercial real estate book sits in loans of $1,000,000 or less. 2,527 FDIC call report, banks carry the site’s small balance flag, which means 40 percent or more of that book is in loans of that size. For a $300,000 loan the flag is a good filter. For a $4,000,000 loan it is the wrong one: it selects banks whose usual loan is a fraction of yours.
HMDA. For multifamily and 1-4 family loans that fall under Regulation C, the public file has each loan’s amount. A loan made primarily for a business or commercial purpose is reported only if it is a home purchase loan, a home improvement loan or a refinancing, and it must be secured by a dwelling. Loans on offices, warehouses and stores are not in HMDA at all. See how to read HMDA data.
SBA files. SBA publishes every 7(a) and 504 loan with its amount and lender. See how to read SBA loan data.
For most commercial property loans from a bank, then, there is no loan-level public record. The book and the size lines are what there is.
Looking for a lender now? Find lenders for this in your state.
Signal four: where does it lend?
The FDIC’s records list every branch. A bank with branches in your county has lenders who know the market and a reason to want the deposit relationship that comes with the loan. Many community banks lend mainly near their branches. That is a convention, not a rule, and the filings do not record a lending territory. A bank two counties away may be glad to hear from you, and a bank with a branch on the same street may send every commercial request to a regional office.
The other lines on a page, and how to read them
CRE to capital and construction to capital. These show how much investor real estate and construction lending a bank holds against its capital. They are our calculation and not the regulators’ test, for reasons set out in the CRE concentration guide. The 2006 interagency guidance says its criteria “do not constitute limits.” A high figure does not mean a bank has stopped lending and a low one does not mean it wants more. For an owner-occupied loan the figure matters less, because the guidance leaves those loans out.
Unused CRE commitments. Money the bank has promised and not yet advanced, mostly on construction loans and lines. It shows a bank that has been active in real estate. It also means some of the bank’s future lending is already spoken for.
Loans to deposits and loans to assets. How much of the bank’s funding is already lent. Read them as context only. No public figure tells you the level at which a given bank slows down.
Participations. Credit unions report loan participations they have bought. Banks do not report a comparable figure that can be read as appetite. If a loan is too large for one lender, ask whether it sells participations.
A worked example
Worked example (hypothetical). A machine shop wants to buy the building it rents in Franklin County, Ohio. The price is $5,000,000 and the request is a $4,000,000 loan. The business will occupy the whole building.
One line. Owner-occupied purchase, $4,000,000, Franklin County, Ohio.
Size. If $4,000,000 should be no more than about a quarter of a bank’s estimated largest loan, the bank needs an estimate of at least $16,000,000. Since the estimate is 15 percent of capital, that is capital of about $107,000,000 ($16,000,000 divided by 0.15). A bank with an estimate of $5,000,000 could in principle make the loan and would be lending 80 percent of its ceiling to one shop. The quarter is this example’s assumption. It is not a rule.
Book. Search Ohio banks with the size floor set and sort by owner-occupied loans held: the search. Raise the floor to fit your own margin.
Size and footprint. Leave the small balance flag off. Keep the banks with branches in or next to Franklin County.
Read. Open the first six pages. On each, read the estimated largest single loan and its caption, the owner-occupied balance and its change from a year earlier, and the branch list.
Second view. Run Loan Comps for the same loan. Because the business will occupy the building, SBA 504 is also open to it, and the SBA files show which lenders made first liens on 504 projects of this size.
The call, and three questions
Public data gets you to the right switchboard. It does not replace the call. Ask:
- “Are you adding owner-occupied real estate loans this year?” A bank that is full, or is steering toward another kind of loan, will usually say so.
- “What size do you like for a loan of this kind?” This is the house limit question asked politely. If your loan is above the answer, ask whether the bank would sell a participation.
- “What do you need to see first?” The answer tells you how the bank works and whether your package is ready.
A quick, specific answer to all three is a good sign that you reached the right person. See finding the right person at a bank.
Want a person to check the public record for your deal? Request financing from The Lender Report’s operator. A person replies by email, usually naming lenders that have made loans like yours. It is free, it covers business and investment property loans only, and nothing is sent to a lender.
What the public record shows, and what it does not
It shows: capital, loan balances by kind on the report date (2026-06-30 here), small loans by original amount, branches, and, for HMDA and SBA loans, individual loans made.
It does not show: what a bank wants this quarter, its rates, fees or terms, whether it asks for a personal guaranty, how long it takes, or who makes the decision. It does not show loans a bank made and sold. Nothing here says a bank is a good or poor choice. Our calculation from public filings, as of the call report date. Not a rating, and not a statement about safety or deposits.
Questions to put to the bank
- Is this request inside your lending area, and does the deposit relationship matter to the decision?
- Is your house limit for one borrower above this amount?
- Do you keep loans like this on your books or sell them?
- If the answer is no, is it the size, the property, the business or timing?
Terms used here
- Call report: The financial report every bank and savings association files with its federal regulator each quarter, with a balance sheet, an income statement and schedules that break out loans by kind.
- Legal lending limit: The most a bank may have outstanding to one borrower by law. For national banks it is 15 percent of capital and surplus, plus 10 percent more when the extra is fully secured by readily marketable collateral.
- House limit: A cap a bank sets for itself, below the legal lending limit, on how much it will hold for one borrower, one property type or one market.
- CRE concentration: A bank's commercial real estate loans measured against its capital. Federal guidance from 2006 flags 300 percent of total capital, with 50 percent growth in 36 months, for closer review.
- Unused commitment: The part of a legally binding promise to lend that the borrower has not drawn yet, such as the open amount on a line of credit or the unfunded balance of a construction loan.
- Loan participation: A loan in which other lenders buy shares from the lender that made it, under a written agreement that keeps the first lender in the loan for its whole life.
- Owner-occupied commercial real estate: Commercial property where the loan is repaid mainly by the business that occupies it, not by rent from unrelated tenants.
- Community bank: A community bank is a smaller bank that takes deposits and lends mostly in the area around its offices, and decides on loans close to home.
- Portfolio lender: A portfolio lender is a lender that keeps the loans it makes on its own books instead of selling them to an investor.
- Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA): The federal law that makes mortgage lenders collect and publish loan-level data on loans secured by a dwelling, including apartment buildings and 1-4 unit rentals.
Sources
Every rule and outside figure above comes from one of these, opened on . Dates are the source's own. Figures from this site's data carry their own source and date beside them.
- 12 CFR 32.3, Lending limits (OCC), general limit and the added limit for readily marketable collateral, retrieved .
- FFIEC 051 Call Report instructions, General Instructions and Schedule RC-C (hosted by the FDIC), retrieved .
- Concentrations in Commercial Real Estate Lending, Sound Risk Management Practices, 71 FR 74580, dated .
- 12 CFR 1003.3, Regulation C, exempt institutions and excluded and partially exempt transactions, retrieved .
Next step: check the record
- Search banks in Ohio by owner-occupied loans heldThe worked example below, as a live search. Change the state and the size to fit your deal.
- Loan Comps for an owner-occupied purchaseLenders that hold or made loans like the one you describe, with the source of each figure.
- Estimate a bank's largest single loanThe 15 percent arithmetic for any capital figure, and what it leaves out.
Keep reading
- Legal lending limit estimate: The most a bank can lend to one borrower, from public capital figures. Always an estimate.
- Deal summary builder: Turn the facts of a deal into a clean one-page summary you can copy or print. Nothing is saved or sent.
- How to place a commercial loan with a bank: A bank loan moves through the same stages every time. Knowing them tells you what the bank needs at each point, what its answer means, and where time is lost.
- The legal lending limit, explained: A bank may not lend more than a set share of its capital to one borrower. The rule explains why a large loan gets shared, and why a lender can say a request is too big for it.
- The CRE concentration guidance, explained: Bank regulators watch how much commercial real estate a bank holds against its capital. The guidance sets two screens. It does not set a limit, and it does not count owner-occupied buildings.
- How to read a bank call report as a loan searcher: Every bank files a call report each quarter. One schedule in it lists the bank's loans by kind. Read that schedule and you know what the bank holds. You still do not know what it made last quarter.
- How to find the right person at a bank for a loan: The main number reaches a branch. A commercial loan is handled by a commercial lender, and at many banks there are only a few. Finding that person is half the work of a first contact.
- What a lender-ready loan package looks like: A lender decides in minutes whether to keep reading. A package that answers the first five questions on one page, and backs each answer with a document, gets read.
Questions people ask
Can public data tell me which bank will make my loan?
No. It shows what each bank holds, how large it is and where it has branches. Those facts rule banks out. Whether a bank wants your loan this quarter is something only the bank can tell you.
Why not just call the biggest banks?
Size is one filter. A very large bank can hold a $4,000,000 loan and may still route it to a unit that is not built for it. Banks that hold many loans of your kind and size are the ones whose lenders see requests like yours every week.
Is the largest single loan figure on a lender page the bank's legal limit?
No. It is this site's estimate: 15 percent of tier 1 capital plus the allowance, from the call report. The regulation uses capital and surplus, state-chartered banks follow state limits, and most banks set a lower house limit of their own.
Cite this
Source: The Lender Report, How to pick banks for a deal with public data, https://lender.report/guides/pick-a-bank-for-your-deal-with-public-data/, data as of November 11, 2026.
General information, not legal, tax or credit advice. A lender's own policy decides what it will do; ask it for the policy in writing.
Source and date appear beside each figure. Banks report balances, not loans made. Loans made come only from HMDA and SBA files. We do not audit filings and can make errors joining them. Report a problem