Debt Availability Tracker by Secondary Market Type
Lender capacity disappears quietly and you find out at maturity. A tracker built from free bank data and broker conversations, by market tier and asset type.
Interest rates are published continuously. Whether anyone will lend to you is not, and in a secondary market it is the more consequential variable.
The distinction matters because these move independently. Through 2023–2025 the quoted rate on commercial debt was knowable at any moment, while the number of institutions actually quoting on a small multifamily deal in a tertiary metro fell without any announcement. Sponsors discovered it at maturity.
What you are actually tracking
Not price. Four things:
- Who is quoting — the count of institutions that would realistically bid on your asset type, in your market, at your size.
- What they require — debt yield floors, DSCR minimums, recourse posture. These tighten before lenders exit.
- What they will not do — the asset types, market tiers or business plans that have quietly moved off the menu.
- How long it takes — quote to term sheet to close. Lengthening timelines are an early sign of internal caution.
A market where five lenders quote at a 9% debt yield floor is a different financing environment from one where two quote at 10.5%, even if the headline rate is identical.
Free data that leads the conversation
Two federal sources tell you something before your broker does.
FDIC Quarterly Banking Profile and call reports. Bank-level commercial real estate concentration, delinquency and capital position. A community bank whose CRE book has grown against its capital, or whose non-current loans are rising, is a bank about to become cautious — regardless of what its lending officer says. This is the single most under-used input available to a small sponsor, and it is free.
Federal Reserve Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey. Quarterly, and asks banks directly whether they tightened standards on commercial real estate loans and whether demand changed. National rather than local, but it establishes the direction, and local behaviour usually follows within a quarter or two.
Neither tells you about debt funds, life companies or the agencies. For those you need conversations.
The tracker
One row per quarter, per market tier and asset type. Keep it boring and keep it going — the value is entirely in the trend.
| Quarter | Market tier | Asset type | Lenders quoting | Debt yield floor | DSCR min | Recourse | Quote→close | Notes |
|---|
Market tier is your own classification — primary, secondary, tertiary — applied consistently. What matters is that a market does not silently change tier between reviews.
Lenders quoting is a count of institutions that gave a real indication in the period, not a list of who exists. A lender who says "not right now" counts as zero and belongs in the notes.
Notes is where the useful detail lives: which asset type someone stopped doing, who changed their minimum deal size, who now wants a deposit relationship.
The patterns and what each means
Lender count falling, terms unchanged. The earliest and most easily missed signal. Institutions are stepping back quietly rather than repricing. Act on this: build a relationship with someone new while you have no urgent need.
Terms tightening, count stable. Repricing rather than retreat. Model your refinance at the new floor — see what debt yield floor works in tertiary markets — but the market is functioning.
Recourse posture hardening. Lenders asking for full recourse where they previously accepted partial, or removing burn-down provisions, is a credit-caution signal that shows up before pricing moves.
Quote-to-close lengthening. Deals taking substantially longer usually means more committee scrutiny. Build the extra time into your maturity planning.
Tertiary falling away while secondary holds. The normal shape of a tightening cycle: the thinnest markets lose capacity first. If you hold assets in tertiary metros, this is your cue to start early.
Tiering by asset type as well as market
Availability is not uniform within a market, and this is where a single "is debt available" question misleads.
- Stabilised multifamily has the deepest capacity, because agency execution is available across the cycle and does not depend on local bank appetite. See local bank debt vs agency debt in emerging markets.
- Small commercial and mixed-use depends almost entirely on local and regional banks, which makes it the most exposed to a single institution's retrenchment.
- Transitional and value-add depends on debt funds and bridge lenders, whose appetite moves fastest in both directions.
- Office, in most secondary markets, is a separate conversation entirely.
Track them separately. A sponsor concluding "debt is available here" from a multifamily quote, then trying to finance a strip centre, has learned nothing useful.
Using it in underwriting
Lender count is a real underwriting input. Two lenders is concentration risk. Reflect it in your refinance readiness score rather than treating financing as a given.
Underwrite the exit refinance at tighter terms than today's. If the tracker shows floors rising, use the trend, not the current quote.
Do not let one relationship become the plan. The cheapest insurance against a lender exiting is a second lender who already knows you. That takes a conversation now and nothing at all later.
What to do next
- Score your position with the refinance readiness framework for non-core assets.
- Read term sheets against the debt term sheet checklist for non-core acquisitions.
- Model the coverage in DSCR sensitivity design for smaller lending pools.
- See the wider source list in top 10 data sources for emerging market underwriting.
Sources
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