For the length of the CRE loan crisis, there's been a basic question of whether smaller banks have precisely the same challenges facing regional and large institutions. Community banks are speaking up more, arguing that they don't have exposure to the most dangerous commercial real estate.

"The focus has been on office as that is the weak category," said John Buran, the chief executive officer of Flushing Financial, told the New York Times. "Most community banks don't have the type of exposure."

The discussion comes down to the setting in which different banks work. The big ones— those with $100 billion or more in assets — work on big projects. As is true of some other types of investing, such as venture capital, the banks have a lot of capital they must put to use on behalf of their investors. Each project like a loan has a cost to process and undertake due diligence. The process is expensive, there are only so many hours in the day, and there must be a high enough return to justify the effort. The loans they consider are larger, where the investments and stakes are higher.