Blueleaf Lending is truly designed to be very different. To say that we are passionate about not only what we do, but how we do it, would be an understatement.

At Blueleaf it starts with a boutique firm that has at its core an incredibly talented and experienced team of people, committed to first understanding your needs and then delivering on them in a way that absolutely exceeds expectations, enables your success, and does so in a way that makes you comfortable, confident and informed throughout.

Blueleaf’s name signifies what we feel is a very different approach to lending, at a time when it certainly feels like banking could use one. However, our value system and beliefs are anything but new. Blueleaf was founded in December of 2006 as the first tier subsidiary of Midwest Community Bank, which is more than 40 years old, family owned and run by my brother Mark and myself. Blueleaf has allowed us to enter the Chicago metropolitan marketplace while avoiding brand confusion from several other financial institutions with Midwest in their name.

Blueleaf was formed to serve three primary lending purposes. It was created for the purpose of a broad range of commercial real estate lending, for the specialty niche of rehab and construction lending and to provide an outstanding place to secure a residential loan. Our commercial real estate lending runs the gamut from loans to enable green construction initiatives, to industrial buildings, to retail and virtually any other type of commercial real estate financing in the spectrum of small to large and straightforward to complex.

Blueleaf was created to serve the specific niche of rehabilitation lending. This second purpose holds a tremendous amount of social benefit for the neighborhoods that are served and is a cause very near and dear to my family. My brother and I grew up working with our father rehabbing, renting, selling and investing in real estate. Leveraging this portfolio was how the family was able to purchase its first bank. At a time of incredible risk and social need in our neighborhoods, when their only hope for improvement are those individuals with the fortitude and skills to reinvest and improve their assets, Blueleaf is extremely proud to be part of this revitalization effort.

Blueleaf was also founded to provide what we feel is one of the best residential lending systems in the country. If you seek a home loan, we believe that we are uniquely positioned to provide the most benefit for you. We like to say that we are “one of the only banks in the country that is run like a broker.” This truly presents the best of both worlds. In our current times, banks provide extreme advantages over brokers, in that they are highly regulated ensuring their quality of delivery is very strong and they represent access to products and pricing that the capital levels of brokers and mortgage bankers simply do not provide for. Also, there is a tremendous amount of stability and integrity represented to our customers. However, we have always felt that the inherent reason that banks have never pursued a platform for delivery such as ours is that they are simply too selfish to do so. In almost all cases at banks what you will find is that they either will only sell their own product, or have a very limited suite of investors and products with whom they deal with. This is done because it is less complex and they benefit more from limiting all of their volume to only their own products or to a limited group of investors. Blueleaf has many different investors at its availability, each of which has many niche products that can enable us to provide very customized and beneficial offerings for your particular circumstance. We also have direct relationships with Fannie Mae and HUD. This all provides for our ability to constantly monitor and deliver on the very best loan products to fit your particular needs and do it in a way that takes advantage of our direct relationships. It’s the difference for you between paying wholesale and retail.

We also pride ourselves on a team comprised of some of the very best professionals the industry has to offer. We have always said that there are tremendous correlations between the way that employees are treated and the way that customers are treated and vice versa. We think that you will find a boutique firm with a small but highly impactful group of lenders empowered by an absolutely first class support staff and procedures without a lot of red tape or bureaucracy to wade through. Our goal has always been to be the best, not the biggest. The result is a team of people who pride themselves at exceeding expectations consistently and have the empowerment and skills to truly understand your particular needs and goals and deliver on them. We welcome the opportunity to play a small role in helping you achieve success and look forward to getting to know you better.