Two of every three commercial purchase loans in Massachusetts come from a bank

The Warren Group collects every mortgage recorded at the Massachusetts registries. Their data, published through Banker & Tradesman, settles a question most borrowers guess at: who actually finances commercial property here.

The answer: banks made $20.39 billion in commercial mortgages in Massachusetts in 2024, and nearly two of every three commercial real estate purchase loans in the state were bank loans. Credit unions wrote about $557 million — real, but small next to the banks. Non-bank lenders wrote $12.61 billion, but concentrated in large multifamily through agency and insurance-company channels, not in the loans most building owners are shopping for.

Count beats volume

The volume rankings are dominated by a few enormous one-off transactions. The more useful ranking is loan count — who is closing week in, week out. In 2025, Rockland Trust closed 177 commercial purchase loans, the most in the state. Eastern Bank closed 59. Greenfield Savings Bank, out in the Pioneer Valley, closed 45. On multifamily purchases, a small bank in Everett — Everett Co-operative Bank — led all Massachusetts banks by dollar volume at $125.7 million across 19 loans, which tells you exactly what kind of buildings it likes: the 5-to-50-unit properties in the inner urban ring.

What a borrower should take from this

First: if your building is in Massachusetts and your loan is between $500K and $10M, your lender is very likely a community bank, and pretending otherwise wastes your time. Second: which community bank is the wrong one changes constantly — the registry record shows appetites moving year to year, town by town. Third: the lenders are not interchangeable on terms. The spread between the right bank and the merely willing bank shows up in rate, leverage, recourse, and how long the process takes.

We track the recorded closings — who is writing, at what size, in which towns — and send each application to the lenders whose current appetite fits it. That is the whole service.

Sources: The Warren Group / Banker & Tradesman, Massachusetts' Top Lenders; Banker & Tradesman, Local Banks Are Top Massachusetts Real Estate Lenders.