CRE concentration: CRE concentration is a bank’s commercial real estate lending measured against its capital, and it is the number that decides how much attention examiners pay to that book.
How it is calculated
Under the 2006 interagency guidance it is loans for construction and land development, multifamily, nonfarm nonresidential property other than owner occupied, and loans to finance commercial real estate that are not secured by it, divided by total risk based capital. Around 44% of banks file under the community bank leverage ratio and report no risk based capital, so BankingLens falls back to tier 1 capital plus the allowance and labels the basis it used.
Formula
CRE concentration = qualifying CRE loans / total risk-based capital
What banks reported in Q2 2026
Across every bank that filed for Q2 2026, the median CRE concentration to capital was 129.78%, with the middle half between 52.73% and 219.57%. The right comparison is almost always the row for the bank’s own size rather than the industry line.
| Bank size (total assets) | Bottom quartile | Median | Top quartile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under $100M | 7.48% | 29.76% | 73.91% |
| $100M - $300M | 37.78% | 80.95% | 152.86% |
| $300M - $1B | 85.15% | 153.44% | 227.48% |
| $1B - $3B | 155.83% | 219.81% | 276.35% |
| $3B - $10B | 164.19% | 230.83% | 290.07% |
| $10B - $100B | 121.54% | 213.73% | 264.02% |
| Over $100B | 20.08% | 46.09% | 67.24% |
Source: BankingLens, computed from FFIEC call reports for the quarter ending June 30, 2026. Quartiles are calculated across the full population of filing banks in each size band, not sampled. Non-insured non-deposit trust companies are left out of every statistic: they take no deposits and make no loans, so a margin or a funding cost computed for them has no meaning.
How to read it
300% is the supervisory screen, paired with 50% growth in that book over 36 months. Crossing it is neither a violation nor a limit. It means examiners expect risk management that matches the concentration, and the bank that cannot show them any is the one that gets the attention.
The common mistake. Counting owner occupied commercial mortgages. The guidance leaves them out, because the repayment source is the business rather than the property, and including them overstates the ratio at most community banks.
Go deeper
- CRE concentration limits explained
- BankingLens pricing and what a subscription adds: percentile rank against the bank’s own FFIEC peer group, fourteen quarters of trend, and the flags an examiner reaches for first.
See also. Construction concentration, Risk-weighted assets, Tier 1 capital, Community bank leverage ratio.
Every figure on this page is computed from FFIEC call reports for the quarter ending June 30, 2026 and is not modeled, estimated or sampled. This page is generated by _tools/seo/build_glossary.mjs and carries no figure that was typed in. See our methodology and disclaimer. Definitions are general guidance, not regulatory or investment advice.