Commercial Lenders

Home

Specialty Access

Commercial lenders don’t usually hang a shingle out on a street via a brick and mortar shop like you local banking institution or mortgage lender.

Access to these players first involves the need for very large amounts of financing, usually in the millions of dollars. Second, many commercial lenders are connected to borrowers through brokers, who provide a middle-man screening of potential applicants and weed out bad prospects or parties who aren’t serious about their business.

The commercial lending broker is focused on making the right match between the prospect and potential lenders. This process can take longer than a traditional application, but more often than not the extra review benefits the deal and allows time for the broker to create unique and beneficial solutions to individual problems with projects. These hurdles would almost always stop a borrower from getting a commercial loan if they went directly to a lender without the facilitation of the broker.

Lending Criteria

Commercial lenders lean towards movement of significant amounts of cash for short time periods to maximize interest profit. The most common commercial loans are in the form of bridge loans which generally last only a few weeks. Their purpose fills a gap by providing interim financing to keep large projects going until permanent, more stable financing is achieved. These short period bridge loans are also made available quickly, circumventing bureaucratic processes that can cause critical project delays.

Commercial lenders are particularly interested in the hard collateral used to guarantee the commercial loan. No surprise, the collateral of course is the default for the lender’s recovery if the loan fails. Thus the type, quality, and equity of the hard collateral can many times be the deciding factor on a successful or unsuccessful loan.