Extending credit to other lenders is less risky for banks than making loans directly to property owners, according to Delaney. The non-regulated firms will absorb losses first if a project sours, protecting banks from deeper losses, he said.

“In a disaster scenario, the banks could possibly have some exposure, but the banks today are safer than they have ever been,” Delaney said.

‘Keep Staring’

The regulatory scrutiny of banks will be a boon for real estate investment firms for the foreseeable future, according to Barry Sternlicht, chief executive officer of Starwood Property Trust, a Greenwich, Connecticut-based mortgage REIT.

There are “capacity issues when your Office of the Comptroller of Currency is staring at you the whole time,” Sternlicht said on a conference call with analysts last month. “We like them to keep staring. That’s fine with us, and we want to be a beneficiary of this climate.”

The OCC said in a July report that banks still aren’t doing enough to offset risk. Banks with assets greater than $1 billion increased their total reserves for commercial loan losses in the second quarter by 2.2 percent, or $787 million, data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. show. They tightened real estate lending standards in the second quarter, particularly for construction, land development and multifamily projects, according to the Fed’s senior loan officer survey, released in July.

More Flexibility

Nonbank lenders have more flexibility in managing and evaluating risk. While banks are required to hold a certain amount of cash against the commercial real estate assets on their books, investment firms make their own rules when it comes to setting aside reserves for potential losses. They use internal rating systems to analyze the soundness of their loans.

Companies such as Blackstone and Starwood make significantly larger loans than banks, meaning they are more exposed to problems at individual projects, said Jade Rahmani, an analyst with Keefe Bruyette & Woods Inc.

In Manhattan, where a surge of construction has led to a glut of luxury apartments, Blackstone extended a mortgage originally made for $285 million on a condominium tower being built by Gary Barnett’s Extell Development Co. when the developer couldn’t pay off the loan on its Aug. 9 due date. Barnett, juggling financing for multiple high-end developments, struck a deal with China’s SMI USA to buy extra time to secure a construction loan for the Central Park tower, slated to be New York’s tallest residential building.