Despite the tighter lending policies, however, Hanson says he is looking to build a multifamily rental building somewhere near Downtown, an area that has seen an increase in that product after a flurry of condominium projects.

"I'm kind of in the middle trying to figure out what's going on," says Hanson, whose company has broken ground on the 357-unit project at Wabash and Randolph streets. "I think some of what is going on, banks are looking at one another and saying, 'We have to be more prudent.' They're all putting their heads down to the same level."

The words Hanson says he often hears are "come back in springtime."

"I bet what'll happen is, sometime this spring, everybody will say things are better," Hanson says. "Everybody will be lending, yet nothing will have changed."

However, lenders haven't completely turned off the spigot. "I did make him an offer on his building and he turned it down," says Michael J. Mihelbergel, managing director of Bank of America's real estate banking group. The issue, he indicates, was recourse.

Transwestern Investment Co. chief executive officer Stephen R. Quazzo backs up Hanson. "We're starting to hear from lenders that underwriting has changed a lot," he says. "It's loan-to-value, and it's their value."

However, the current environment increases the value of borrowers' relationships with their lenders, Quazzo adds.