U.S. banks eye Europe property market The scarcity of capital means lenders can charge as much as 3.75 percentage points over benchmarks for the safest pieces of commercial mortgage debt, about five times the spread in 2007, according to Alvarez & Marsal, an adviser on real estate transactions. Commerzbank, Germany's second-biggest lender, is shuttering its Eurohypo unit, Dutch lender SNS Reaal is selling its entire $10.5 billion commercial real estate loan portfolio and Irish Bank Resolution Corp. has been liquidated by the government. Citigroup will give commercial mortgages for "property finance to less straightforward trades, provided they are well structured and we are comfortable with the underlying asset," said Wesley Barnes, head of European commercial real estate finance at the New York lender. Wells Fargo plans to increase its United Kingdom business, after providing credit to office buildings, industrial properties, multifamily housing projects and hotels, said Chip Fedalen, head of institutional and metro-markets at the bank's commercial real-estate division.