by Calculated Risk on 11/04/2013 02:00:00 PM

From the Federal Reserve: The October 2013 Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices

The October 2013 Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices addressed changes in the standards and terms on, and demand for, bank loans to businesses and households over the past three months. Domestic banks, on balance, reported having eased their lending standards and having experienced little change in loan demand, on average, over the past three months. The survey contained two sets of special questions. Motivated by the increase in long-term interest rates since the spring, the first set of questions asked banks to describe whether they had experienced changes in the volume of applications for residential mortgages and whether they had changed lending policies for new home-purchase loans. The second set of questions examined the standards and terms on subprime auto loans over the past 12 months. This summary is based on the responses from 73 domestic banks and 22 U.S. branches and agencies of foreign banks.

Regarding loans to businesses, the October survey results generally indicated that banks eased their lending policies for commercial and industrial (C&I) loans and experienced little change in demand for such loans over the past three months.2 All domestic banks that eased their C&I lending policies cited increased competition for such loans as an important reason for having done so. ...

The survey results also indicated that banks, on average, did not substantially change standards or terms on lending to households. Modest net fractions of respondents reported having eased standards on prime residential mortgage loans, with a few large banks indicating they had eased standards on those loans.
emphasis added

Click on graph for larger image.

Here are some charts from the Fed.

This graph shows the change in lending standards and for CRE (commercial real estate) loans.

Banks are loosening their standards for CRE loans, and for various categories of CRE (right half of graph).

The second graph shows the change in demand for CRE loans.

Banks are seeing a pickup in demand for all categories of CRE.

This suggests (along with the Architecture Billing Index) that we will see an increase in commercial real estate development in the near future.