Commercial Title Insights — CRE Edition | September 2026
A monthly briefing for Michigan commercial real estate attorneys, lenders, brokers, and investors.
CRE Market and Deal Pulse
The Data Center Land Rush Has Become an Entitlement Story
The share of U.S. single-family sales within five miles of a large data center has doubled to 1.5% since 2018, driven by new facilities pushing into rural ground, a median 27 miles from the nearest metro. The risk has moved from siting to approvals: about 75 projects worth $130 billion were blocked or delayed in Q1 2026 alone, and rating agencies now ask whether zoning is in hand before construction. In Michigan that is a large-parcel assembly problem with a utility and easement problem attached.
Source: National Mortgage News, Aug. 19, 2026
Jackson Hole: The Fed Is Saying Less, Not Easing More
Fed Chair Kevin Warsh used his Jackson Hole remarks to reinforce that the Fed is pulling back from forward guidance, and it read hawkish. Underwrite the next acquisition or construction take-out at today's cost of capital, not a refinance you are counting on.
Source: National Mortgage News, Aug. 28, 2026
Breach Notices Passed Last Year's Record by June
The Identity Theft Resource Center counted more than 471 million breach-victim notices in the first half of 2026, already past all of last year. Every one of those records is raw material for the email that arrives looking like a payoff letter with updated banking instructions. Verify every change of wire instruction by voice, at a number you already had.
Transaction Spotlight
Details anonymized to protect client confidentiality.
A recent sale-leaseback involved a parcel with no frontage of its own. Its access to a public street ran across an adjoining frontage parcel in related ownership, under a cross-easement. While the same people controlled both parcels nobody had a problem. The easement is the only reason the asset is not landlocked, which makes it worth exactly what its documentation and its insurance say it is worth.
Two things have to happen on a deal like that, and they are separate. The easement has to be written into the insured estate itself, so the policy insures the access along with the land rather than treating it as a note in the file. Then the policy needs the indirect access endorsement, which is the coverage that responds if the easement route to a public street turns out to be defective. Related ownership is not a substitute for either one. It is a relationship, and relationships end — at closings, in estates, and in disputes. If you are buying or financing land whose access depends on somebody else's parcel, that is the question to ask before the purchase agreement is signed, not during title review. At Midwest Commercial, we have the knowledge of transactions like this so we are prepared and ready.
CRE Title and Closing Insight
Sequencing a Michigan Assemblage So It Closes on One Day
An assemblage is not one deal with several legal descriptions. It is several deals that have to close simultaneously, each with its own chain, its own seller, and its own capacity to blow the date. The failure mode is almost never the parcel everyone is watching — it is the quarter-acre remnant with a probate gap, an unreleased 1997 mortgage, or an owner who will not sign until everyone else has. Order title on every parcel at once, on day one, before the last purchase agreement is negotiated. The cheapest week in an assemblage is the week you find out which parcel is the problem.
The Michigan work sits at the tax parcel and the survey. Combining or splitting parcels runs through the Land Division Act and the local assessor, and the assessor's calendar is not your calendar — a combination requested late in the year may not hit the roll until the next one, which affects the legal description, the tax proration, and sometimes the lender's collateral. Put one surveyor over the whole assemblage producing a single description for the combined site plus one per acquisition, so the deeds, the mortgage, and the policy all describe the same dirt. And settle early whether the lender wants one policy over the assembled site or one per parcel — that changes what the commitments must say about the gaps and strips between them.
From Dave's Desk
Most of what shows up on your file as "the title company caught it" started as a conversation somewhere else. September 16 I am in Columbus for a commercial CE and CLE session on ALTA surveys and commercial claims — claims sessions are the cheapest education there is, because they teach somebody else's loss. Then ALTA ONE in Scottsdale, October 12 through 15, where the national underwriters set posture for the coming year.
The reason I go is narrow: I would rather know in October what an underwriter will approve in February than find out during your closing.
— Dave
Work With Our Commercial Desk
When you need title and closing services for a Michigan commercial transaction — acquisition, refinance, development, or workout — we handle the complexity from commitment through closing. Reach out for a quote, a pre-deal title walk-through, or a second set of eyes on a commitment you've already received.
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About Midwest Title and Dave Nykanen
Midwest Title's Commercial Division handles Michigan's most complex commercial closings — acquisitions, refinances, construction loans, multi-parcel assemblages, 1031 replacement legs, distressed asset sales, and large-scale development deals. Founded and led by Dave Nykanen, a licensed Michigan real estate attorney with three decades of commercial real estate experience as both a practicing attorney and a title agent, the division gives CRE attorneys, lenders, brokers, and investors a Michigan title partner who reads commitments the way you read them — as deal documents, not paperwork.
Contact:commercial@mwtmi.com | Midwest Title | Commercial Division | Michigan-Licensed Title Insurance Agent
This newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.
