These 220 banks and 5 credit unions all carry a construction and development book large enough to show real activity in this market, and all have a presence in Iowa. Construction lending is a transaction type rather than a property type: the loan funds in draws against work completed, prices off a floating index, and runs for the build period rather than a decade. Most construction loans are short-term and are expected to convert to permanent financing or refinance once the building is finished and leased, so the lender you choose for the build is often not the lender you end up with. Banks dominate this market because draw administration and inspections need a servicing operation; the capital guide compares the alternatives.
Banks Based in Iowa, Largest Construction Books First
25 of 182 qualifying banks are headquartered in Iowa. These are the lenders whose whole business is this market, and the ones most likely to look at a smaller build.
| # | Institution | Construction book | Share of investor CRE | Branches in IA | Contact |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bankers Trust | $523m | 16.4% | 16 | Contact available |
| 2 | Hills Bank and Trust Company | $354m | 30.2% | 21 | Contact available |
| 3 | Community State Bank (Ankeny, IA) | $346m | 41.8% | 10 | Contact available |
| 4 | West Bank | $325m | 18.1% | 8 | Contact available |
| 5 | Quad City Bank & Trust | $275m | 31.6% | 4 | Contact available |
| 6 | Cedar Rapids Bank & Trust | $239m | 21.0% | 9 | Contact available |
| 7 | Bank Iowa | $190m | 28.8% | 25 | Contact available |
| 8 | Northwest Bank (Spencer, IA) | $167m | 24.3% | 20 | Contact available |
| 9 | Central Bank (Storm Lake, IA) | $158m | 23.5% | 17 | Contact available |
| 10 | Luana Savings Bank | $108m | 14.6% | 6 | Contact available |
| 11 | Capra Bank | $107m | 50.0% | 2 | Contact available |
| 12 | First Citizens Bank (Mason City, IA) | $101m | 22.6% | 6 | Contact available |
| 13 | VISIONBANK OF IOWA | $86m | 24.5% | 13 | Contact available |
| 14 | Farmers Trust and Savings Bank | $86m | 33.9% | 1 | Contact available |
| 15 | Farmers State Bank (Waterloo, IA) | $79m | 16.4% | 8 | Contact available |
| 16 | Raccoon Valley Bank | $77m | 43.6% | 4 | Contact available |
| 17 | Bank Midwest | $75m | 24.6% | 4 | Contact available |
| 18 | Fidelity Bank & Trust | $75m | 28.8% | 33 | Contact available |
| 19 | Iowa Trust & Savings Bank | $68m | 33.0% | 4 | Contact available |
| 20 | Home State Bank | $68m | 46.6% | 2 | Contact available |
| 21 | City State Bank | $68m | 38.2% | 9 | Contact available |
| 22 | The Security National Bank of Sioux City, Iowa | $65m | 26.4% | 10 | Contact available |
| 23 | South Story Bank and Trust | $58m | 30.5% | 6 | Contact available |
| 24 | Lincoln Savings Bank | $56m | 12.6% | 16 | Contact available |
| 25 | Pinnacle Bank | $54m | 62.7% | 1 | Contact available |
National Lenders With Branches in Iowa
25 of 38 qualifying banks are headquartered elsewhere but have offices here. The construction figure is their national book, so read it alongside the branch count — a large book behind a handful of local offices is a different proposition from a bank with a branch network in the state.
| # | Institution | Construction book | Share of investor CRE | Branches in IA | Contact |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | JPMorgan Chase Bank, National Association | $18.79bn | 11.4% | 13 | Contact available |
| 2 | Wells Fargo | $12.46bn | 12.0% | 39 | Contact available |
| 3 | Bank of America | $9.68bn | 17.5% | 4 | Contact available |
| 4 | US Bank | $9.38bn | 22.5% | 56 | Contact available |
| 5 | BMO Bank | $4.49bn | 21.7% | 21 | Contact available |
| 6 | UMB Bank | $2.93bn | 27.3% | 8 | Contact available |
| 7 | Regions Bank | $2.81bn | 25.8% | 4 | Contact available |
| 8 | Associated Bank | $2.55bn | 28.2% | 6 | Contact available |
| 9 | Old National Bank | $2.45bn | 14.3% | 2 | Contact available |
| 10 | First National Bank of Omaha | $1.88bn | 41.8% | 3 | Contact available |
| 11 | Nicolet National Bank | $732m | 22.7% | 37 | Contact available |
| 12 | First Interstate Bank | $576m | 9.8% | 45 | Contact available |
| 13 | Heartland Bank & Trust | $430m | 19.3% | 4 | Contact available |
| 14 | Great Southern Bank | $402m | 13.2% | 20 | Contact available |
| 15 | First Mid Bank & Trust | $362m | 12.7% | 14 | Contact available |
| 16 | Blackhawk Bank & Trust | $204m | 31.8% | 5 | Contact available |
| 17 | TBK Bank (Triumph) | $195m | 28.8% | 3 | Contact available |
| 18 | BankFirst | $127m | 52.0% | 3 | Contact available |
| 19 | Alerus Financial | $111m | 8.1% | 1 | Contact available |
| 20 | Security National Bank of Texas | $101m | 19.8% | 2 | Contact available |
| 21 | Farmers State Bank | $99m | 22.8% | 9 | Contact available |
| 22 | Availa Bank | $66m | 19.1% | 16 | Contact available |
| 23 | F&M Bank | $56m | 75.0% | 1 | Contact available |
| 24 | Time Bank | $50m | 24.5% | 2 | Contact available |
| 25 | Fidelity Bank | $48m | 85.1% | 3 | Contact available |
Credit Unions Lending on Construction in Iowa
Showing 5 of 5 qualifying credit unions, largest construction books first — those based in Iowa are tagged HQ, and the rest lend in from elsewhere. They are listed separately from the banks above for two reasons a borrower needs to know: you must be eligible for membership before you can borrow, and credit unions are capped by regulation on how much they may lend to any one borrower. That cap is the last column — it is usually the figure that decides whether a deal fits at all, and it is often well above what they currently hold. Their figures come from NCUA call reports rather than FDIC ones.
| # | Credit union | Construction book | Share of member CRE | Max loan to one borrower | Contact |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Veridian Credit Union | $123m | 15.4% | $159m | Contact available |
| 2 | Green State Credit Union | $68m | 2.6% | $148m | Contact available |
| 3 | Cobalt Credit Union | $29m | 13.5% | $18m | Contact available |
| 4 | Vibrant Credit Union | $15m | 36.2% | $14m | Contact available |
| 5 | Centris Federal Credit Union | $14m | 12.7% | $21m | Contact available |
What this list is, and what it leaves out
A construction book is not a credit box. Every institution here held construction and development loans on 30 June 2026 at 2% or more of its commercial real estate book. That is evidence they lend on construction, and better evidence than a marketing page because it is what they actually hold — but it is not a commitment to fund your project, at your size, in your submarket. Construction underwriting also turns on things this page cannot see: your track record as a sponsor, the general contractor, and whether the project is pre-leased.
More lenders exist than this page lists. 220 banks and 5 credit unions qualified in Iowa. Debt funds and bridge lenders finance a great deal of construction and file no call report at all, and plenty of banks lend on construction without publishing criteria anywhere. Running your deal through the search covers all of them, not just the institutions on this page.
We hold a named lending contact for 207 of them.
Sources. FDIC Call Reports (30 June 2026), the FDIC Summary of Deposits, and NCUA call reports for the same quarter. An institution appears here if its construction and development balance is 2% or more of its commercial real estate book and at least $250,000, and it has a presence in Iowa. The test is deliberately a share, not a dollar floor. A dollar floor is a bank-size filter in disguise: applied to construction, a $5m floor passes 35.7% of banks under $300m against 85.7% of banks between $300m and $1bn, because construction balances at community banks are genuinely smaller — the median bank under $300m reports $2.6m. A share test cannot sort by size, and the $250,000 minimum exists only to exclude rounding noise; it removes eight banks nationally. Construction and development is the call report's own category and covers loans secured by land under development and by structures being built, including the construction phase of projects that become apartments, retail or industrial on completion. Construction book is institution-level and unprorated: no state split of the loan book is published, so an institution lending in several states shows its full construction book on every state page where it qualifies. That is why this page separates banks based in Iowa from national banks with offices here, rather than ranking them against each other on a national figure. The credit union table is a single list in balance order, with in-state charters tagged, because there are far fewer of them and splitting would leave tables of one or two rows. Branch counts are offices in Iowa from the Summary of Deposits; NCUA publishes no equivalent branch file, so the credit union table carries no branch column rather than an invented one. Credit unions are held to a different test: a construction book of $10m or more, and no share test at all. The share test was dropped because a low share on a large book is not an absence of construction lending — at a 10% threshold it would have excluded credit unions holding $85m, $66m and $37m of construction. Share and the single-borrower ceiling are both reported as columns instead, so a reader can judge focus and capacity directly. Max loan to one borrower is the NCUA member business lending ceiling, set at 15% of net worth; it is reported rather than filtered on, because filtering on it would sort purely by institution size. Contact availability refers to whether Lender Compass holds a named contact, not to anything the institution publishes.