Choosing a Lender for a Commercial Loan

May 11, 2015

When you are in the market for a commercial loan, you have the choice of:

1. Choosing to work with a direct lender who represents their one loan program.
2. Choosing to work with a lender who represents a good number of different loan programs.

There are a number of advantages in working with a commercial lender who represents a good number of different loan programs.

1. Good commercial lenders who represent a good number of lenders are educated on and familiar with quite a few different loan programs. This gives them great insight on what’s available in the market. There is a great variety of different commercial loans, each one of them having advantages. Those direct lenders who represent only one loan product will be much more limited in what they offer for loans.
2. Direct lenders who represent one commercial loan program are less likely to have great knowledge of other loan choices. This is because this type of lender has focused on far fewer loan types, and is unlikely to have much experience on a variety of other loan types.

Here are a couple of examples that illustrate how going to a commercial lender who represents quite a few different commercial loan programs, is often superior to a lender who represents only one loan program.

Example 1: An investor goes to their local bank which is quite limited on commercial loan choices. This investor wants a non-recourse multifamily loan. The lender at the bank tells the investor that their bank doesn’t do non-recourse loans.

The investor comes to us and finds out that 70% of the loans we do are non-recourse. Furthermore this investor qualifies for a non-recourse loan with us. This is discovered on the pre-qualification process.

Example 2: An investor wants a 30 year fixed rate and 30 year fully amortized apartment loan. The investor meets a banker and is told that the bank only offers up to a 7 year fixed rate and 20 year amortization with their loan products. The same investor then goes to a lender such as ours who represents many loan types. The investor is happy to find out that a 30 year fixed rate and a 30 year fully amortized apartment loan is one that can be done with this loan source.

It is important to note that there are instances that you will do very well with a commercial lender who represents only one loan product. Therefore as an investor it is important to get educated. We find that most of the time we will do better on a loan than the commercial lender who only represents one product. This is greatly due to our having a variety of different loan choices that fit a variety of different commercial loan needs.

Contact us if you would like to see about pre-qualifying for our best multifamily/commercial loan rates and terms. Also keep in mind that another area of expertise for us is bridge loans. Contact us if you would like to discuss your particular commercial lending needs. Call (503)376-7303 or email terry@businessloanstore.com

To discover more about our loan products and rates, go to https://apartmentloanstore.com/loans/programs/,

Bruce Painter, Director of Marketing, Business Loan Store