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Commercial financing has changed dramatically during the past few months. The net result has been a reduction in commercial lenders as well as stricter standards for acquiring commercial loans and commercial mortgages. Unfortunately there has also been no shortage of misinformation about the availability of commercial funding, so an important change issue is to realize that for commercial lending there are both apparent changes and real changes.
As is often the case with financial changes, it remains to be seen how many will be temporary or permanent. But from a practical perspective, commercial borrowers are left with no choice but to adapt to the changing commercial finance environment. Regardless of how long the changes might be kept in place, small business owners must be prepared to operate within a more complicated climate for commercial real estate loans and business financing.
Perhaps the most dramatic change has been a significant reduction in business lending activity overall. This has been due to several events occurring almost simultaneously. Several major commercial lenders have gone out of business altogether. Many banks have stopped business finance lending while continuing consumer lending. Numerous business lenders have enacted stricter standards for the commercial financing transactions they are still willing to consider.
What should commercial borrowers do about this? A primary option that business owners should explore involves looking beyond their local market area for help with commercial real estate financing and other commercial loans. To accomplish this, it should be helpful to contact a working capital financing expert operating throughout the United States.
In addition to fewer business lenders to choose from, there are two other significant changes which must be anticipated by small business owners before seeking new business financing. First, most lenders have cancelled or are about to eliminate unsecured lines of credit for many businesses. Second, commercial lenders are increasingly demanding more collateral for virtually all commercial finance funding.
One effective commercial financing strategy for overcoming the combined obstacles of fewer lenders, more collateral and fewer unsecured credit lines is to consider a business cash advance program based on future credit card processing activity. This is proving to be one of the few sources of commercial funding that has not been adversely impacted by recent events. To learn more, it will be advisable to discuss the potential with a small business financing expert who can provide advice about business cash advances as well as other business finance solutions.
Another key change issue for commercial mortgage loans and working capital loans is simply the likelihood that more changes will be forthcoming in the near future. It is increasingly obvious that many banks will continue to modify their business lending programs in response to changing conditions as they occur.
To adequately prepare for future commercial finance changes that might (or might not) occur is a daunting task for a business owner. A commercial financing expert familiar with Plan B contingency financing for commercial loans will prove to be a valuable resource for any borrower wanting to seriously deal with both current and future changes impacting the financial health of their business.
Steve Bush is a working capital financing expert. Small business financing and commercial real estate financing advice. Commercial finance and business cash advance programs at AEX Commercial Financing Group
For a while now I’ve written about the latest “change” in commercial lending: “The Small Balance Commercial Lender.” These guys are re-writing the rules on commercial loans that are less than $3 Million. While this might not impact your business immediately if you are dealing with larger properties, it will eventually affect you because of something else they are doing:
Stated Income or EZ Document Loans
Commercial lending, with the exception of private money loans, has been strictly a “full document” underwriting proposition. This meant that the borrower had to show up with a mountain of paperwork including personal tax returns, business tax returns, and financial statements in addition to the documents related to the property such as the leases, rent roll, and income and expense history. And in the end, the lender would underwrite the loan based entirely on the property’s cash flow, ignoring the borrower’s income, anyway!
These new lenders are willing to take into account the borrower’s free cash flow on a stated basis, and make their underwriting decision using the borrower’s credit score, the property’s cash flow, and the borrower’s reserve liquidity. This is unprecedented in commercial lending and will most likely force conventional lenders to come up with competing programs in the near future or they will lose too much loan volume.
Another consideration is that the investors who buy these loans will most likely increase their loan amounts in the future if they have a good experience with the smaller loans. Why wouldn’t they? It costs as much to underwrite and fund a $5 Million loan as it does a $500K one, yet the return is 10 times as much. This will put even more pressure on conventional lenders to create some kind of competing program or sell the same programs from the same investors.
So my personal take on the situation is that there will be some significant changes in the loan marketplace if the Small Balance Commercial Lender has a winning formula. They are too new to have any real experience in a down market and I’m sure that the conventional lenders will be watching them closely.
WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete statement with it: ?Craig Higdon, ?The Investment Property Insider,? works as a commercial mortgage broker. He publishes the weekly ?Investment Property Insider? e-zine and blog, www.InvestmentPropertyInsider.com. Visit the blog and get a complimentary report on commercial financing techniques.?
Recent commercial lender changes are likely to impact most small business owners. If a commercial borrower wants to continue their present banking relationship, they will find (in most cases) that the business lending changes are permanent and cannot be avoided. A few new and more flexible commercial lending sources represent a welcome exception to this trend.
One of the biggest commercial lending changes involves new guidelines for working capital financing. Most banks appear to be quietly eliminating business lines of credit or severely reducing the amount they are willing to finance to a level which is not helpful to an average business. Very few businesses can survive without a reliable source of working capital, so this change promises to receive the highest priority from most small businesses. To replace the disappearing commercial lines of credit, the most practical options for business borrowers include working capital loans and merchant financing from one of the alternative commercial finance sources still active in small business financing programs.
The difficulty of locating investment property financing illustrates another business lender change. If the commercial property is considered to be owner-occupied (the owner occupies a substantial portion of the building), more banks will be interested in making commercial real estate loans. Investors that do not occupy the property often own business properties like shopping centers and apartments. For many banks, it appears that they are currently restricting their commercial lending activities to those which qualify for SBA loans (Small Business Administration) which generally exclude investor-owned situations.
A third significant business lending change is demonstrated by revised guidelines for refinancing commercial real estate loans. In almost all cases, commercial lenders have dramatically reduced the loan-to-value percentages that they will lend. In some areas and for specific types of businesses, many banks will no longer lend over half of the appraised value. While this causes difficulties when attempting to buy a business, the problems for a commercial borrower reach a crisis magnitude when refinancing an existing commercial loan. In many cases the original business loan was based on a much higher percentage of business value than the bank is currently willing to provide. The lending problem is further compounded when a current appraisal reveals a decrease in value since the original loan was made. Due to a distressed economy which frequently results in decreased business income that then leads to lower commercial property values, such an outcome is especially common.
In a fourth example of commercial lending changes, for virtually all small business finance programs many small business owners have already discovered an inflated fee structure from most banks. Perhaps the bank perspective for some of the commercial financing fee increases is that they need to find a revenue source to replace the diminishing income from small business loans which has resulted from bank decisions to decrease commercial loan activity. When they encounter suddenly increased business financing fees levied by their current bank, business borrowers should seek different commercial funding sources except in unavoidable and unusual circumstances.
A final example of commercial lender changes is depicted by banks changing their overall guidelines for small business financing. Many banks have effectively stopped making any new commercial loans to small businesses regardless of business income or creditworthiness. Unfortunately these banks are not announcing publicly that they have discontinued small business finance activities. This means that while they might accept business loan applications, they do not intend to actually finalize commercial financing in most cases. Whenever it becomes obvious that the bank has no real intentions of making a requested working capital loan or commercial mortgage, this approach has clearly frustrated and enraged business borrowers.
The five commercial lending changes described above are unfortunately the proverbial tip of the iceberg. As they approach business lenders to obtain commercial real estate financing, working capital loans and small business financing, business owners will need to be especially skeptical and diligent.
Stephen Bush has provided candid advice to business owners for more than 25 years and is a small business loans expert. AEX Working Capital Financing and Small Business Financing