Welcome To The Real Finds Blog: Commercial Real Estate Insights for Chicago and the Midwest
Welcome to The Real Finds Blog, your daily briefing on commercial real estate trends across Chicagoland and the Midwest. Published by Gordon Lamphere, a fourth-generation commercial real estate broker at Van Vlissingen & Co., this blog delivers sharp, actionable insights for CRE professionals navigating a changing market. Every article connects macro trends—interest rates, automation, supply chains, policy shifts—to local real estate strategy across high-demand submarkets, including:
- Downtown Chicago – office space, adaptive reuse, capital markets
- Elk Grove & O’Hare – industrial leasing, logistics infrastructure
- Kenosha & SE Wisconsin – warehouse development and distribution hubs
- Oak Brook & Schaumburg – suburban office leasing and reinvestment
- Naperville & the I-88 Corridor – flex space, R&D, life sciences
- Bolingbrook & the I-55 Corridor – fulfillment centers and industrial site selection
- Lake, DuPage, Will, Kane, and McHenry Counties – land use, entitlements, development opportunities, and tenant migration
From daily blog posts to in-depth strategy guides and transcribed podcast interviews, Real Finds turns global uncertainty into hyper-local market intelligence for investors, landlords, tenants, developers, and brokers New posts are published every weekday.
Why Blackstone Is Pouring Billions Into Net Leases With Sean Hostert – RFP 105
Net Lease Decoded: Why the Quietest Corner of Commercial Real Estate Is Drawing the Loudest Capital Most commercial real estate...
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Inference AI Is Rewriting The Commercial Real Estate Site Selection Playbook
How Inference and AI Could Rewrite the Entire Site Selection Playbook for Commercial Real Estate The old site selection checklist...
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Sidley Austin’s 725 Randolph Signals More Office Trouble?
Sidley Austin's 725 Randolph Move Is a Warning Shot for Chicago's Office Market When the city's most storied law firm...
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The AI Real Estate Goldmine Everyone’s Missing With Bruce Garrison – RFP 104
The Underground Layer That Decides Which AI Data Centers Get Built In commercial real estate, the data center conversation almost...
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Pulling Off the Largest Office-to-Residential Conversion In History With Eugene Flotteron – RFP 103
The Conversion Underwriting Playbook: What 25 Water Street Teaches CRE About Turning Distressed Office Into Housing The largest completed office-to-residential...
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Insuring Commercial Real Estate in the Age of Big Data and AI
Navigating Today's Commercial Real Estate Insurance Markets For decades, insuring a commercial building was a relationship business. A broker walked...
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Commercial Real Estate Doomers, Gurus, & Industrial Opportunity With Chad Griffiths – RFP 102
Chad Griffiths on Industrial Real Estate's Next Decade Industrial real estate may be the most universal asset class in commercial...
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The Industrial Real Estate Risk Playbook With Daniel S. North – RFP 101
The Industrial Real Estate Risk Playbook With Daniel S. North For most of the last decade, the legal language buried...
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Hydrogen, Data Centers, And The End Of Energy Poverty With Whitaker Irvin Jr. — RFP 100
When Power Becomes the Site Constraint: Hydrogen, Data Centers, and the New Math of Industrial Development For most of the...
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How Regional Brokers Beat The National Flags With Kurt & Stewart Jensen – RFP 99
Kansas City vs. Chicago: How Two Midwest Industrial Markets Compare in 2026 The Midwest industrial market is often discussed as...
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Key Criteria for Your Industrial Space Search
https://youtu.be/bWNjcjX5BnISelecting the right industrial space is a critical decision that directly impacts the efficiency, productivity, and growth of your business....
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Valuing Chicago Data Centers and Adjacent Properties
Data Centers vs. Moore's Law: How Should Chicago Area Investors Value Data Center and Adjacent Properties Until roughly 2022, a...
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Five Generations, Five Submarkets: How to Pick Chicago Office Space in 2026
Solving for Five Generations in the Workforce: What It Means for Chicagoland Office Demand Workforce demographics rarely make the lease...
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Why Every Chicagoland CRE Investor Should Know What FIMBY Means
FIMBY: Why The "Family In My Backyard" Movement Should Be On Every CRE Investor's Radar For over a century, American...
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Brownfields to Billions: The Hidden CRE Opportunity With Sam Haydock – RFP 98
Brownfields to Billions: Unlocking CRE's Most Overlooked Opportunity Drive through almost any older industrial corridor in the Midwest and you...
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Mastering the Art and Science of Persuasion With Josh Bandoch – RFP 97
The Persuasion Framework Every Commercial Real Estate Professional Needs Most commercial real estate professionals spend enormous energy on market knowledge,...
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Chicago Industrial Space Manufacturing multifamily Office Space Quantum & Data Centers Real Estate Real Finds Podcast Retail Warehouse
State Of The Chicagoland Commercial Real Estate Market 2026 – Q2 – RFP 96
State Of The Chicagoland Commercial Real Estate Market The Chicagoland Commercial Real Estate market stopped waiting. Here is what that...
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The Return Of Main Street? Commercial Real Estate In A Car Light Society
The Return Of Main Street? Commercial Real Estate In A Car Light Society For seventy years, American commercial real estate...
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