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.
This MIT Startup Is Rewriting The Rules Of Commercial Real Estate With Honghao Deng – RFP 93
Most commercial real estate decisions about office space are built on occupancy data that is, at best, incomplete. Badge swipe...
Read More
Creating Competition: How to Leverage Other Industrial Spaces
Leveraging Industrial Spaces As A Tenant https://youtu.be/9Ayt6Z616yI Why Lease Negotiation Is a Market Competition Problem Industrial tenants routinely leave significant...
Read More
Creating Effective Breakout Areas in Your Office
Tips And Tricks To Create Effective Breakout Areas in Your Office https://youtu.be/O5lO-H7TLCQ Why Breakout Areas Have Become a Baseline Expectation...
Read More
Creating Effective Buyer Profiles: Understanding Different Industrial Buyer Personas
Creating Effective Buyer Profiles: Understanding Different Industrial Buyer Personas https://youtu.be/bYNbp7x_NKQ Marketing an industrial property without a clear picture of who...
Read More
Creating Effective Print Marketing Materials
https://youtu.be/eyyd3hlsiyg Effective Print Marketing Materials In Commercial Real Estate In commercial real estate, digital marketing gets most of the attention....
Read More
Creative Financing for Short-Term Commercial Real Estate Investments
https://youtu.be/5Y1g9I7ylB8 Creative Financing For Short-Term Commercial Real Estate Investments Access to capital has always shaped how commercial real estate deals...
Read More
Commercial Property Property Management & Insurance Risk In 2026
Commercial Property Management & Risk Reduction In The Age of AI Artificial intelligence is reshaping the operational and analytical infrastructure...
Read More
Commercial Real Estate Strategy In The Age Of A Globalized Office Environment
Commercial Real Estate in the Age of a Globalized White-Collar Talent Pool Office demand has always been a derivative of...
Read More
Shift From Location To Power In Commercial Real Estate With Britt Burt – RFP 92
The New Site Selection Calculus: Why Power Is Replacing Location as the Defining Variable in Commercial Real Estate For decades,...
Read More
6100 North River Road in Rosemont & The Story Behind O’Hare’s Real Estate Market
Is 6100 North River Road in Rosemont A Shift In The O'Hare Market? Fortress Investment Group just paid $50 million...
Read More
Cook County Assessor 2026: What the Election Results Mean for Commercial and Residential Real Estate
A New Era Under Cook County Assessor Pat Hynes? In an upset that sent shockwaves through Chicago's real estate community,...
Read More
AI, Commercial Real Estate, and the Future of Work with Elatia Abate – RFP 91
AI, Commercial Real Estate, and the Future of Work with Elatia Abate What does the rise of artificial intelligence mean...
Read More
Is There Still Real Value To The In-person Workspace?
The value of the In-person Workspace The office hasn't disappeared. But what people expect from it — and what makes...
Read More
Scheduling Regular Inspections for Industrial Facilities
How To Schedule And Conduct Regular Inspections For Industrial Facilities Regular inspections are the unglamorous backbone of every well-run industrial...
Read More
Insurance, Development Risk & The Hidden Economics Of Real Estate With Lisa Holt – RFP 90
For most of the past century, commercial real estate operators treated insurance the way they treated utility bills: an unavoidable...
Read More
Preparing Your Commercial Real Estate Portfolio For AI Disruption
Artificial intelligence is not a future threat to commercial real estate. It is already reshaping how space is used, how...
Read More
Chicago’s Truck Parking Problem Is Reshaping Industrial Real Estate
Why the truck parking crisis is driving up IOS values across Chicagoland The United States is short roughly 40,000 to...
Read More
The Myth That Built The Modern Office (And Why It Is Finally Collapsing)
Your Office Was Designed For Someone Who Does Not Exist There has always been a ghost living inside the modern...
Read More