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.
Landlord Concessions: Rent Abatement Vs. Tenant Imrpovement Dollars In Q3 -2026
Landlord Concessions: Rent Abatement Vs. Tenant Improvement Dollars In 2026 Every commercial lease negotiation reaches the same fork: should the...
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Why Size Matters in Office to Residential Conversions?
Does Office-to-residential Conversion Size Matter? Office-to-residential conversions are no longer a niche. According to RentCafe data reported by Construction Dive,...
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Do Hospitality Brands Still Matter? with Stephen Wendell
Hard Brand vs. Boutique Hospitality: What is the Trade-off? Do hospitality brands still matter? The short answer is yes, but...
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Building Portfolios Around Biophilic Design
Why Biophilic Design Has Moved From Architectural Trend to Leasing Strategy For most of the last decade, biophilic design sat...
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Is It Time To Go Beyond Badge Swipe Data?
Why the Most-Quoted Office Occupancy Number Measures Attendance, Not Demand Every week, a single number gets passed around commercial real...
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State of the Chicago Retail Market – 2026 Q3
State of the Chicago Retail Market – 2026 Q3 Chicagoland retail rents are growing, vacancy is near historic lows, and...
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State of the Chicago Office Market – 2026 Q3
State of the Chicago Office Market – 2026 Q3 Here is a sentence I did not expect to write in...
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State of the Chicago Industrial Market – 2026 Q3
State of the Chicago Industrial Market – 2026 Q3 If you traded out of Chicago industrial on the strength of...
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State Of The Chicagoland Commercial Real Estate Market 2026 – Q3 – RFP 110
State Of The Chicagoland Commercial Real Estate Market Last quarter, the Chicagoland commercial real estate market stopped waiting. This quarter,...
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Should I Make My Office Building Pet Friendly?
Pet Friendly Offices: The Cheapest Amenity Chicagoland Landlords Keep Ignoring Landlords will spend seven figures on a lobby renovation before...
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Are Office Employees The New Consumers?
The Modern Office As Experiential And Hospitality Space The return-to-office debate was never really about mandates. It was about the...
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The Retail Tenants That Actually Pay: The 5 Best Tenants For Shopping Center Owners
The tenants landlords brag about, and those that actually make money for retail property owners, are two entirely different lists....
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Empty Cribs, Empty Pocketbooks: Real Estate’s Demographic Dilemma
Commercial real estate investment has traditionally thrived on location, development, and population growth. The sector, an integral part of the...
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Why Everything You Believe About Trade Deficits Is Wrong With Michael Klein – RFP 109
What Tariffs, Trade Deficits, and the Dollar Actually Do to Commercial Real Estate: Michael Klein on RFP 109 Most commercial...
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Finding The Right Building For Office-To-Residential Conversion
What the ideal office-to-residential conversion looks like, and what makes a good deal Almost every office building in Chicagoland can...
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Why Institutional Capital Is Wrong About Workforce Housing With Jon Siegel – RFP 108
Why Institutional Capital Is Wrong About Workforce Housing With Jon Siegel - RFP 108 Most multifamily capital is crowded into...
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Why Family Real Estate Portfolios Collapse With Dr. Carey Chronis – RFP 107
Why Family Real Estate Portfolios Collapse With Dr. Carey Chronis - RFP 107 Commercial real estate portfolios rarely collapse because...
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Why Smart Investors Are Buying Dirt With Ron Rohde – RFP 106
Why Industrial Outdoor Storage Is the Asset Class Big Capital Cannot Easily Buy: Lessons From Ronald Rohde https://youtu.be/vxrTHcuZdOE Why Smart...
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