Commercial Loans and Fun Blog

There a lot different ways to earn income on a commercial loan.  You have the interest rate on the face of the note.  You have the discount for which you might have purchased an existing commercial loan.  You have the late charges.  You have the prepayment penalty.  You have default interest rate and maybe even a late charge on the balloon.  You have the exit fee. 

By the way, an exit fee - maybe five points - is like a prepayment penalty, except the lender is entitled to his exit fee whether the commercial loan is paid off early, late, or exactly on time.  Think of an exit fee like gum on your shoes.  No matter what you do, you can't get rid of it.

Why would a lender charge an exit fee on a commercial loan?  Maybe the commercial loan is exactly 75% loan-to-value on a commercial property, and there is not enough room for even loan points.  The lender has to wait until the end to get his loan origination fee.

More commonly the deal is quite risky, and the lender will only make the commercial loan if he enjoys a huge return.  The exit fee is a yield sweetener that bumps up the return to the lender.

Why not just increase the interest rate?  Usually the answer is that the property cannot service the debt initially.

Example:

Roger and his partners are experts at buying distressed apartment buildings in low-income, blue-collar areas and then turning them around.  They get a chance to buy a rundown 400-unit apartment project that originally cost $25 million to build for just $10 million.  Only 35% of the units are habitable.  

Roger goes to several banks for a commercial construction loan to buy and renovate the property.  The bankers drive by the property and flee in terror.  Many bridge lenders do the same thing.  Finally they locate a capitalistic bridge lender who wants a 22% return.

They structure their commercial loan with an 8% coupon rate, six origination points, and an exit fee of six more points for one year.  They can't have a higher interest rate than 8% because, at a 35% occupancy rate, the property doesn't generate enough cash flow to make higher interest-only monthly payments.

Roger, his partners, and their established crew of workman tear into the property, and within five months, the project is looking like a decent place to live.  The lowlifes are evicted, and new tenants arrive in droves.  At the end of one year, Roger and his partners refinance the now-handsome property with a traditional lender and pay the capitalistic bridge lender his $8 million commercial loan, plus his exit fee of $480,000 (six points).

Coupon Rate:

So what is a coupon rate?

A coupon rate is the yield paid by a fixed-income security - in this case, a commercial loan.  A fixed-income security's coupon rate is simply just the annual coupon payments (interest payments) paid by the issuer relative to the bond's or commercial loan's face or par value.  The coupon rate is the yield the bond paid on its issue date.

Example:

In 2004, General Motors issues a 20-year debenture at 6% interest.  A debenture is simply an unsecured corporate bond.   The coupon rate is 6%; i.e., the holder of the debentures enjoys 6% interest payments.

The average hard money broker makes ten-times
what a desk-and-a-phone mortgage broker makes.

Fifteen years later, General Motors only has to pay 2.875% on any new five-year debentures.  This makes those old 6% debentures worth a fortune because the coupon rate is so high.

The old 6% debentures are actually selling at a premium in the secondary market.  A premium occurs if a buyer of these old debentures pays more than their face value.  A buyer might pay $115,000 for a $100,000 debenture because he gets to enjoy a 6% coupon rate for the remaining five years of the term.  Because he paid an 15-point premium, the new investor's yield-to-maturity might be just 3.0%.

Bottom line:

The coupon rate is just the interest rate on the face of the note.

For the last forty years, hard money commercial lenders and their private investors have been making money hand-over-fist by making subprime and nonprime commercial loans.  

Both sub-prime and non-prime commercial loans share the same characteristic.  The deal isn't quite good enough for a bank.  At least one of the Three C's of Underwriting - capacity to repay, collateral, and credit - is weak.

What is the difference between a subprime commercial loan and a nonprime commercial loan?  Here's an easy and fun way to remember it.  A subprime commercial loan is loan to an axe murderer.  A nonprime commercial loan is also a loan to an axe murderer, but the axe murderer has to first provide a bunch of paperwork.  No-doc loans became taboo after the Great Recession.

But here's the thing about subprime commercial loans.  In my lifetime, commercial real estate has crashed by 45% three times - once during the S&L Crisis, once during the Dot-Com Meltdown, and once during the Great Recession.  And you know what?  Even though the 65% LTV hard money loans in our portfolio suddenly became 120% LTV deals after the crash, the vast majority of our smaller deals kept making their monthly payments!

Wall Street has figured out a way to securitize nonprime commercial loans using asset-backed securities.

What is an Asset-Backed Security?

According to Investopedia, an asset-backed security (ABS) is a financial security collateralized by a pool of assets such as loans, leases, credit card debt, royalties or receivables - all kinds of different stuff.  For investors, asset-backed securities are an alternative to investing in corporate debt.  An ABS is similar to a mortgage-backed security, except that most of the underlying securities are not mortgage-based.

The basic concept behind the asset-backed security is that you investment is backed by lots of different types of collateral.  A tax law change may crater commercial real estate estate values, like it did in 1986, but aircraft leases might keep purring along.  An investor does not have all of his eggs in one basket.

Asset-backed securities allow lenders (more precisely, issuers) to generate more cash, which, in turn, is used for more lending, while giving investors the opportunity to invest in a wide variety of income-generating assets.  Usually, the underlying assets of an ABS are illiquid and can't be sold on their own.  However, pooling the assets together and creating a financial security, a process called securitization, enables the owner of the assets to make them marketable.

Real quick:  Securitization is the process of taking a bunch of loans, sticking them into a giant pool, and then issuing little pieces of paper (securities) that say that the holder gets, say, 1/100,000th of any cash flow coming back to the pool.  

The underlying assets of these pools may be home equity loans, automobile loans, credit card receivables, student loans, scratch-and-dent residential loans (deals that got kicked out of another securitization), subprime commercial loans, or other expected cash flows.

Issuers of ABS can be as creative as they desire.  For example, asset-backed securities have been created based on cash flows from movie revenues, royalty payments, aircraft leases and solar photovoltaics.  Just about any cash-producing situation can be securitized into an ABS.

Example of an Asset-Backed Security

Assume that Company X is in the business of making automobile loans.  If a person wants to borrow money to buy a car, Company X gives that person the cash, and the person is obligated to repay the loan with a certain amount of interest.  Perhaps Company X makes so many loans that it runs out of cash to continue making more loans.  Company X can then package its current loans and sell them to Investment Firm X, thus receiving cash that it can use to make more loans.

Investment Firm X will then sort the purchased loans into different groups called tranches.  These tranches are groups of loans with similar characteristics, such as maturity, interest rate and expected delinquency rate.  Next, Investment Firm X will issue securities (bonds) that are similar to typical bonds on each tranche it creates.

Individual investors then purchase these securities and receive the cash-flows from the underlying pool of auto loans, minus an administrative fee that Investment Firm X keeps for itself.

An ABS will usually have three tranches: Class A, B and C. The senior tranche, A, is almost always the largest tranche and is structured to have an investment-grade rating to make it attractive to investors.  An investment-grade rating is BBB or higher according to Standard & Poors.  The reason this is important is because many trust documents forbid investments in any deal that is not investment grade.

The B tranche has lower credit quality and, thus, has a higher yield than the senior tranche. The C tranche has a lower credit rating than the B tranche and might have such poor credit quality that it can't be sold to investors.  In this case, the issuer would keep the C tranche and absorb the losses.

Why Do We Care About Asset-Backed Securities?

Many of the commercial lenders making nonprime commercial loans today ultimately get their lending dough, not from deposits or from private investors like Blackburne & Sons, but rather by sprinkling their nonprime commercial loans into ABS pools.

Oooo.  He was just kidding, and he apologizes.
Please put down that knife!  Please, plea.... Uhhh  :-)

You experienced commercial loan guys, I promise that I am about to share some surprising, cool, and new stuff about SBA loans.  I just please need your patience for a few paragraphs.

SBA lenders are NOT the same.  As often as I harp on this important concept, I am far from convinced that all of my readers completely grasp it.  Sure, the Small Business Administration guarantees a large portion of all SBA loans; but it does NOT guaranty the entire loan.

The unguaranteed portion is still flopping out there in the breeze, just waiting to get written off as a complete loss when the loan defaults.  Since each and every SBA lender has a significant amount of its own dough at risk, they will each underwrite an SBA loan request differently.

It would therefore be foolish to ever say, "Oh, I don't qualify for an SBA loan.  I applied to the SBA, and they turned me down."  First of all, you never apply to the SBA.  You apply to one of twelve bazillion SBA lenders.

And since every SBA lender underwrites its loans differently, you would be crazy to quit after just one turndown.  Eighteen is the magic number.  If you use C-Loans.com to quickly shift your SBA loan application to eighteen different SBA lenders, and they all turn you down, then you can finally admit defeat.

C-Loans is the absolutely perfect tool to place SBA loans because we have a TON of SBA lenders, and you only need to create your loan application once.  You then submit that single application to suitable and hungry SBA lenders, six at a time, with just one click.

Finally the Surprising, Cool, and New Information:

One of our SBA lenders wrote to me today and said, "George, you should consider opening your marketing efforts up to business acquisitions and debt refinances through the SBA program."

I wrote back, "Does the SBA finance the purchase of businesses without real estate involved???"

My buddy replied, "I’m doing one now. It is a $1.5 million purchase of a service business.  The business leases space from an unrelated third party, so there is no real estate collateral.

The buyer put down 20%, and we financed the rest with a SBA guaranty.  The lender is required by the SBA to try and get to a 1:1 collateral position.  Business assets are heavily discounted by the SBA, so typically we have to take a second mortgage on a house, IF there is equity.  Some banks will do these loans with up to a $1 million to $1.5 million airball, meaning a collateral shortfall.  It depends on the bank's risk appetite.

"What, then, is a debt refinance?  Refinancing a conventional loan?"

A debt refinance may or may not involve real estate.  It can be any debt a business has incurred, where the SBA loan can reduce the monthly payment by 10%.

Example 1:

Joe Business Owner has a hard money loan at 12%, with a 2 year call.  He can get a SBA loan to refinance it at a lower rate and a 25-year amortization.

Example 2:

Joe Business Owner is being exited (i.e. kicked out) of a big bank for a covenant violation.  A covenant is a contractual promise (in a loan agreement), like a borrower promising to pay off his line of credit and maintaining a zero balance for at least 30 days per year.   Joe Business Owner needs to refinance his $1 million line of credit.  He can get a SBA term loan with a 10-year amortization, if he qualifies.

Another cool use of an SBA loan is to buy a franchise.  There are nationwide SBA lenders that specialize in the purchase of franchises, like restaurants, like a KFC franchise; hair salons, like Pro Cuts; and shipping stores, like MailBoxes, Etc.

You get more dollars, a longer amortization, and a lower credit it score requirement when you finance your franchise purchases through these specialized franchise SBA lenders.

I was speaking with one of my very wealthy private investors about commercial loans last week.  He is an attorney and a very sophisticated investor, so I was shocked when he revealed that he had just made a very large second mortgage on an apartment building in Houston.

If you don't immediately recognize the issue, and if you are not thinking to yourself, "This guy is absolutely nuts," today's training lesson will be very instructive.

You will recall that an acceleration clause is the language in a trust deed or mortgage that gives the lender the right to demand to be repaid in full immediately.  Normally you make monthly payments to your mortgage lender.  If you fall behind, you can usually just bring your past due payments current, pay your late charges, and get back on a regular monthly repayment schedule.

But at some point; like if you fall behind by too many payments; or if you do something horribly wrong; like if you get caught mishandling toxic substances on the property; the lender will no longer allow you to reinstate your loan.  Reinstate means bringing your past due payments currents or curing some defect on the property and then getting back on a monthly payment schedule.

An alienation clause in a trust deed or mortgage is language that gives a mortgage lender the right to accelerate his loan; i.e., to demand to be immediately paid in full.  Alienate? Does that mean peeing on a Martian?  Haha!  No.  Alienate means to transfer any part of the title to the property to any other person or entity.  

"Okaaaay, George, but your wealthy investor didn't buy the apartment building.  He didn't take any ownership interest in the property.  He didn't buy the property subject to the mortgage.  He merely placed a second mortgage on the property."

Mortgage lenders, modernly, define alienation to mean transferring all or part of the title to the property, placing a second mortgage on the property, obtaining a mezzanine loan secured by the membership interests of the LLC that owns the property, or issuing preferred equity to a preferred equity investor, without the lender's permission.

By the way, taking title to a property subject to a mortgage means that you don't notify the lender of the purchase and you don't assume the mortgage.

Now back to my "crazy" mortgage investor who made that second mortgage on the apartment building.  Was he crazy?  If the underlying lender finds out, the lender could demand that the entire commercial loan be repaid in full.

Whether the investor is crazy depends on the size of the underlying first trust deed.  If my investor gets to earn 9% on a $1.5 million second trust deed investment, and if the underlying first trust deed was only $1.1 million, then my investor my investor was crazy like a fox.

By the way, you may have noticed that I used "trust deed" rather than "mortgage".  Texas is a trust deed state, which is a big deal.  It means a lender - especially a second trust deed lender - can foreclose much faster.

Can you imagine making a $1 million second mortgage behind a $6 million first mortgage and then being forced to keep the underlying first mortgage current for the 18 months it takes to foreclose a mortgage in a mortgage state?  The monthly payments on a $6 million commercial loan are in the range of $38,000 per month.  After 18 months, the second mortgage lender would have to shell out $684,000 to protect a $1 million investment.  Yikes!

So if you are ever going to make a second mortgage investment, make sure that you are in a trust deed state, like California or Texas, and that your commercial loan is a second trust deed and not a mortgage.  This way you only have to keep the first trust deed current for five months or so while you foreclose.

In how much danger is my investor?  Even if the underlying bank somehow discovered the new second mortgage and accelerated its loan, my guy is rich enough to simply pay off the first mortgage - assuming it's not insanely large.    And in real life, very few banks ever bother to check the title to property securing their commercial loans for presence of a junior lien (mortgage, mezzanine loan, or preferred equity).

The party who is real danger is the borrower.  Many large commercial loans these days are non-recourse; i.e., if the market goes south and the borrower loses the property in foreclosure, the borrower is NOT personally responsible for any loses the lender suffers after foreclosing.

This assumes, however, that the borrower doesn't commit any Bad Boy Acts.  Voluntarily placing a second mortgage on the property is a Bad Boy Act and will trigger a springing personal guaranty.  A springing personal guaranty is a guaranty that becomes effective upon the occurrence of a certain condition, e.g., a bankruptcy filing, toxically contaminating the property, intentional waste, etc.

Suppose commercial real estate crashes by 45% (a magical number I urge you to remember).  The second mortgage lender decides to simply walk away from his investment.  The first mortgage investor forecloses, and in the chaos of the real estate crash (think the S&L Crisis, the Dot-Com Meltdown, and the Great Recession), the property gets neglected.  The roof leaks, and mold starts to grow.  Vandals break in and steal the copper and appliances.  Squatters poop in the halls.

The result is a huge loss for the first mortgage lender, and because of the springing personal guaranty, the lender can now come back against the borrower for his losses.  Word to the wise.  Don't commit Bad Boy Acts.

We're gonna have some fun today, and it's is not about commercial loans.  There is a good marketing lesson, however, to be learned today, whether you're a commercial broker, a general contractor, a real estate investor, or a commercial loan broker.  

The most successful marketing piece I ever wrote was about the book, The Hot Zone, and how the Ebola virus almost killed us all.  You probably don't know this, but about 25 years ago the Ebola virus dangerously mutated in a lab in Restin, Virginia.  The Ebola virus became transmissible by air.  Holy poop!  No longer did you have to touch the blood.  Just breathing the same air would kill you.

Dozens of monkeys in a research lab in Reston started bleeding out from their eyes, noses, mouths, and tailpipes; and then they would die.  The monkeys were in different rooms, so obviously the pathogen was traveling through the air ducts.  

The scientists doing the autopsies on the monkeys had no clue that the monkeys had been exposed to Ebola, so when their petri dishes started turning purple, they had no reluctance about sniffing the petri dishes for a contaminant that made the petri dishes smell like fermentation.

But when the scientists sniffed the petri dishes, they did NOT smell alcohol.  Hmmm.  What was happening?  So the scientists put the samples under an electron microscope, and - oh, my goodness - there was the Ebola virus.  It was now transmissible by air, and they had been taking big sniffs.

Worse yet, these scientists had been going home every night and kissing their wives and kids.  And then the wives had gone to the grocery store, thumped melons, and handled vegetables.  They had spread the virus all over Restin.

So why didn't every person on earth die?  You'll have to read the book.  Okay, that was mean.  It was true.  The Ebola virus had indeed mutated to make it transmissible by air; but that same mutation made the virus harmless to humans (but still 100% fatal to primates).  The scientists were fine, and after spending three weeks in an isolation chamber, they were released.  

But today we are going to talk about H.G. Wells classic book, The War of the Worlds.  The book is about a Martian invasion of earth, and it was written... get ready for it... in 1898.  The Martians launched scores of huge cylinders from the surface of Mars that plowed into the Earth's crust and then unscrewed themselves back up to the ground.  Then these scary, slug-like creatures emerged, complete with slimy tentacles.

When a peace deputation was sent in to make first contact, the Martians used a heat ray to melt the unfortunate envoys.  Remember, folks, this book was written in 1898, about 80 years before the first laser beam.  When the Army was sent in, they too were melted by the Martians.

Then the Martians unleashed giant, three-legged tripods - war machines that were were four-stories high, armored, and armed with a pivoting heat ray cannon.  The destruction of mankind began in earnest.

And we haven't even gotten to the good stuff yet...  Scroll forward 40 years to the year 1938.  People didn't have TV sets yet, so the whole family would sit in the living room and listen to radio shows.

At the beginning of the one-hour show, Mercury Theater on the Air, the announcer, a 23-year-old Orson Wells, informed the listening audience that the coming show was just a story.  Then the radio began playing ordinary music, which was suddenly interrupted by a new flash from Orson Wells describing a pitiless invasion by creatures from Mars.

Many of the radio audience had been been listening to The Chase and Sanborn Hour with Edgar Bergen and tuned in to "The War of the Worlds" during a musical interlude, thereby missing the clear introduction that the show was a drama.  The urgent, horrified performance by Orson Wells was so believable that almost one-million Americans poured into the streets in terror.

Haha!  The whole reason this came up is because I recently downloaded a modern, well-done performance of the War of the Worlds as an audiobook, complete with sound effects, multiple voice actors, and absolutely eerie music.  What fun!

Recently watched and enjoyed, Mary Poppins Returns.  There was even a cameo where 90-year-old Dick Van Dyke danced on a desktop!  

Be on the Lookout For Real Estate Developers Who Need Equity:

Please be on the lookout for real estate developers of multifamily, office, retail, or industrial projects who are just a little short of construction equity.  Banks will no longer lend up to 80% loan-to-cost.  For some properties, banks are demanding that the developer contribute as much as 35% of the total cost of the project as a condition of their construction loan.

Blackburne & Sons Realty Capital Corporation can raise tiny amounts of equity for such projects - up to $1.5 million to $2 million.  Got a deal that needs less than $1.5 million in additional equity, please call Angela Vannucci at 916-338-3232.

Private Money Commercial Permanent's:

Notice that I did not describe our private loans as bridge loans, but rather as permanent loans.  Blackburne & Sons makes first mortgage loans with a 30-year amortization (essentially interest-only), but with a 15-year term.

This means that your borrower will never have a refinance his loan during a bad recession, when the value of his building might have fallen by 45% in value.  To make our loans even more attractive, there is no prepayment penalty.  In other words, you can use our loan as a bridge loan, with the added reassurance of the extra term.

Got an "A" Quality Commercial Loan Request?

You can find literally thousands of hungry banks using C-Loans.com and our other free commercial loan portal, CommercialMortgage.com.

Wished You Could Have Afforded College?

Is your four-year degree in advanced basket weaving?  If you are well-spoken and a natural salesman, you can earn a handsome income as a commercial mortgage broker.  You can learn the entire profession of commercial mortgage brokerage in one weekend.

Do you own a mortgage company or a real estate brokerage company?  If so, you should have in your library our 9-hour video training course ($549) in commercial real estate finance.  You just sit your new agent in front of a computer, and nine hours later he is in a position to make you money.  You can use our training course again and again.  This is what Les Agisim of Trevor Cole Financial does.  Over the years, he has trained thirty or forty agents using his one copy of our video training course.  

By the way, Trevor Cole Financial just closed yesterday its 55th commercial loan for C-Loans.com.  Are you a commercial lender?  Get carefully-scrubbed commercial or SBA loan leads delivered to your email box at no out-of-pocket cost to you.   We are especially looking for bridge lenders capable of funding commercial loans larger than $1 million.  

Poor kitten was exhaustipated.

In my early years of brokering commercial loans to savings and loan associations (S&L's) - the most active type of commercial real estate lender 35 years ago - the debt service coverage ratio was the bane of my existence.  Arghh!  I hated that darned ratio.  It killed soooo many of my commercial loan deals.

Example:

My client was buying a small office building on the San Francisco peninsula in 1988 for $1,000,000.  His plan was to put down 25%, and I submitted a $750,000 first mortgage request to Bayview Federal Savings.  My loan officer at Bayview went out and drove by the property.  Thumbs up.

Then we went to Loan Committee, and these stingy misers came back and said that at a 1.25 debt service coverage ratio, with an 11.5% interest rate and a 25-year amortization, the property would only carry a $625,000 new loan!!!  Just 62.5% LTV?  On a purchase money loan?  Are you kidding me?  Sometimes the only solution is a warm bath and a sharp razor.

Quick Review of the Debt Service Coverage Ratio:

You will recall that the debt service coverage ratio (DSCR) is the defined as an income property's net operating income divided by the proposed annual loan payments - known as the debt service.  The proper form is:

1.xx

It is customary for the debt service coverage to be expressed as two digits to the right of the decimal point; i.e., out to the hundredths of 1%.

Example:

The Maple Apartments enjoys a net operating income (NOI) of $80,000.  The owner has applied for a $900,000 refinance of the property, and First National Bank is offering a 4.875% loan, amortized over 25 years.  The debt service (annual payments) on this proposed $900,000 loan is $63,252.  Compute the debt service coverage ratio ("DSCR").

DSCR = NOI / Debt Service

DSCR = $80,000 / $63,252 = 1.26

It is important to note that when computing the debt service coverage ratio that you must use annual figures; i.e., the annual NOI and the annual loan payments.  You can't do the calculation using 1/12th of the NOI and just the monthly payment on the loan.  

This is unfortunate because if you were allowed to compute the debt service coverage ratio on a monthly basis, you could qualify for a slightly larger loan amount; e.g., maybe a loan of $1,023,000 rather than just $1,000,000.  Sorry.  Nice try.  But commercial lenders will make you do the calculation on an annual basis.

The Point of Today's Training Article:

Just so that we do not lose sight of our objective here, you will recall that the title of this article suggests that the debt service coverage ratio is now almost irrelevant.

It's arguably true.  Last week ten-year Treasuries plunged 50 basis points.  A basis point is 1/100th of one percent.  Therefore 50 basis points is 50/100th of one percent - or one-half of one percent.

Commercial loans from banks are typically priced at 2.75% to 3.5% over 5-years. Treasuries.  Careful:  It was the yield on ten-year Treasuries, not five-year Treasuries, that briefly plunged 50 basis last week and set off the whole inverted yield curve panic.

By the way, the reason why our bond yields plunged is because the yield on German bunds went negative this month and sent European bonds buyers rushing over to the U.S. for yield.  A bund is a bond issued by the German government.  

As to an inverted yield curve - when three-month Treasury bills have a higher yield than ten-year Treasury bonds - don't freak out.  Inverted yield curves only correlate to a recession within 18 months if the difference in yields stays at 50 basis points for at least three months.

Okay, We are Finally Here:

With ten-year Treasuries plunging, five-year Treasuries have also declined to just 2.18% as of March 29, 2019.  Five-year Treasuries were 2.45% one month ago and 2.58% one year ago.

Since permanent commercial loans from banks are typically priced at 2.75% to 3.5% over five-year Treasuries, we are looking at commercial loans of only 4.93% to 5.68% today.  These loans are fixed for the first five years, readjusted once, and then fixed for five more years.

Wow.  At today's low commercial loan rates, few commercial loans will be constrained by a 1.25 debt service coverage ratio.  Still smarting from the losses they took during the Great Recession, however, commercial banks may still limit their new permanent commercial loans to just 68% to 70% loan-to-value.

Credit unions, on the other hand, are flush with cash.  Look for a few credit unions to close some commercial loans this quarter at a full 75% LTV.

Need a small commercial loan of less than $1 million.  Sometimes small multifamily, office, retail, and industrial buildings - particularly office and industrial condo's - sell at very low cap rates, and they don't cash flow very well.  Blackburne & Sons will gladly lend up to 75% LTV, almost regardless of negative cash flow if your buyer and borrower has good global income.  These are NOT bridge loans but rather permanent loans (30/15) with no prepayment penalty.

Someone applied for a $32 million commercial construction loan on C-Loans.com today, and the commercial loan request was looking pretty good until I got down to the net worth of the borrower.  Arghh!

The broker inputting the deal indicated that the land was worth $13,000,000, but the developer was only worth $1 million to $2 million.  Huh?  What?  And he wants to borrow $32 million?

Guys, you're reminded that the Net-Worth-to-Loan-Size Ratio is supposed to be at least 1.0.  In other words, if a developer is trying to build a $32 million project, the combined net worth of the guarantors should be greater than, or equal to, $32 million.

This brings up an interesting point.  When computing the Net-Worth-to-Loan-Size Ratio, you can combine the net worths of the various developers, if there is more than one.

Example:

Bobbie Builder, Donnie Dentist, and Sandy Saleswoman are trying to build a spec office building.  Spec is short for speculative, meaning that the developers do not have the building pre-leased.

The total cost of the project is $10 million.  The credit union will only lend up to 70% of cost, meaning that the commercial construction loan in our example will only be $7 million.  Note:  Credit unions are now making commercial construction loans.

Bobbie Builder's net worth is $2 million.  Donnie Dentist has a $1.5 million net worth.  Sandy Salesperson also has a net worth of $1.5 million. Their combined net worth is $5 million. Will they qualify for a $7 million commercial construction loan?

Answer:  Probably not because their combined net worth is only $5 million; however, if Donnie Dentist had $1 million in cash and marketable securities; i.e., he had lots of liquid assets, the group might just qualify for their commercial construction loan from a credit union, but probably not from a commercial bank.  Credit unions are desperate for commercial loans these day, so they are very loosey-goosey.

Back to Our $32 Million Commercial Construction Loan:

The maddening thing about this particular commercial loan application is that the commercial loan broker indicated that the land was worth $13 million.

In general, a developer will usually own the land before applying for a commercial construction loan.  Ideally, the bank would prefer that the developer own the land free and clear.  Even if there is still some sort of first mortgage on the land, I suspect that the developer probably had several million dollars in equity just in the land.  Therefore his net worth is almost certainly far more than just $1 million to $2 million.

If this is true, then the commercial loan broker who entered this attractive commercial construction loan into C-Loans.com really blew it!  The bank is going to take one look at the relatively pathetic net worth of the developer and summarily turn the deal down.

Lesson of Today's Article:

Pay attention to the net worth of your borrower.  His net worth must usually be at least as large as the loan amount; otherwise, you are probably wasting your time.  The ratio is not written in stone, so if your ratio is 0.92, you're probably still okay.  Every commercial loan ever made had a few black hairs; i.e., imperfections.

One day a lawyer was riding in his limosine when he saw a guy eating grass. He told the driver to stop. He got out and asked him, "Why are you eating grass".

The man replied, "I'm so poor, I can't afford anything to eat." So the lawyer said, "Poor guy, come back to my house." The guy then said, "But I have a wife and three kids." The lawyer told him to bring them along.

When they were all in the car, the poor man said, "Thank you so much for taking us back to your house. It is very kind."  "You're going to love it there," said the attorney. "The grass is over a foot tall."

I just learned a new commercial loan and commercial real estate term today - the junior box.  We have all heard of big box stores like Wal-Mart, Target, and Home Depot.

A junior box is a type of big box store, just the smaller variety.  It is a retail space containing 20,000 to 40,000 square feet.  Common examples of junior box tenants are Hobby Lobby, Goodwill, and PetSmart.  Junior boxes actually make up the largest portion of overall net-leased big-box stores on the market.

Big boxes are larger than 80,000 square feet, while the mid box is a retail unit of 40,000 to 80,000 square feet.

Need a commercial loan?  We just fixed a programming bug that prevented more than 500 of our newest commercial lenders from appearing on CommercialMortgage.com.  The next time you need a commercial loan, please be sure to take a fresh look at this now-repaired commercial loan portal.  That programming bug?  Arghhh.

Dear Abby:  I think I need to see a specialist, but my doctor insists he can handle my problem.  Can a general practitioner really perform a heart transplant right in his office?

A.   Hard to say, but considering that all you're risking is the $20 co-payment, there's no harm in giving him a shot at it.

The LAPD, The FBI, and the CIA are all trying to prove that they are the best at apprehending criminals. The President decides to give them a test. He releases a rabbit into a forest and has each of them try to catch it.

The CIA goes in. They place animal informants throughout the forest.  They question all plant and mineral witnesses. After three months of extensive investigations they conclude that rabbits do not exist.

Then the FBI goes in.  After two weeks with no leads they burn the forest, killing everything in it, including the rabbit, and they make no apologies.  The rabbit had it coming.

Then the LAPD goes in. They come out two hours later with a badly beaten raccoon. The raccoon is yelling: "Okay!  Okay!  I'm a rabbit!  I'm a rabbit!"

Are you an accredited investor?  Interested in earning 26.2%?  My wife's cousin, Alex, specializes in hotel construction, and over the past 23 years I have watched him, as a hotel general contractor, build 60 hotels, most of them flagged.  On a personal level, Alex is a true gentleman, with a lovely wife and fine children.  If you ever met him, you would admire his gentlemanly ways.

Alex is now building for his own portfolio his second flagged hotel, a Marriott Fairfield Inn located on I-5 in Oregon.  The equity investors in his first hotel earned well in excess of 25%.  I begged him to allow me to help raise equity for him.

Folks, I am an attorney.  I am an Eagle Scout (like both of my sons).  I have faithfully managed $50 million of my investor's money for 39 years.  I am telling you, this is the most promising investment I have ever seen.  This equity investment opportunity is sold out on paper, but there is always some shrinkage as we approach the closing.  Some of the backups will almost certainly get in on the deal.  I urge you to call Angela Vannucci at 916-338-3232 and get on the list of backups.

A few moments ago a guy named Alan made one of the best deals of his life.  He traded me a list of 20 bankers making commercial real estate loans.  In return, I am sending him our 9-hour video training course, How to Broker Commercial Loans.

This course is absolutely fantastic!  We teach our students an entire profession in one, long exhausting day; and those of our students who are natural salespeople will earn incomes rivaling those of a physician.  

We sell it elsewhere on C-Loans.com for $549 - not the $250,000 in tuition that some liberal arts colleges charge.  Haha!  The course teaches you everything from marketing for commercial loans, underwriting commercial loans, packaging the commercial loan, finding the right commercial lender, and lastly, fee collection.

But let's suppose you are a starving commercial mortgage broker. You would love-love-love to own this course, but you don't have $549.  I will give you this 9-hour commercial mortgage brokerage training course course for free, if you will compile a list for me of twenty bankers making commercial loans.  These are DVD's, so you will have to pay $30 or so for the shipping.

I will please need the name of the loan officer, the bank, the address, the phone number, and his email address. And guys, these commercial real estate loan officers must work at either a FDIC-insured bank or a NCUSIF-insured credit union. I will not accept commercial real estate loan officers working for any other type of commercial lender. I just want bankers.

You will probably want to call the twenty closest banks to your office and ask for a commercial real estate loan officer. Sometimes getting the banker's email address can be tricky. They don't like giving it out. I like to ask, "If I wanted to send you a commercial loan package, to what email address would I send it?"

Please send your list to me by email, george@blackburne.com. Please insert in the subject line, "Trade for 20 Bankers." Don't forget your own own address and phone number. Obviously this is George Blackburne III (the old man). Guys, I get 1,300 emails every single day, so it will be very easy for me to miss your email. Right after emailing me your list of bankers making commercial loans, please send me a text to 574-360-2486, "George, I just sent you a list of 20 bankers."

 Guys, I Please Need Your Help

I have a problem.  Between C-Loans.com and CommercialMortgage.com, I am generating a half-dozen large ($1 million+) bridge loan requests every single day, and I don't have enough Big-Boy bridge lenders to work them.

Now I have given you free, searchable access to almost 4,000 commercial lenders (mostly banks) on CommercialMortgage.com.  Would you kindly please-please-please return the favor by sharing with me some bridge loan lenders that can comfortably handle commercial loans of over $1 million.  I am really looking for the proven guys who do deals of $1 million to $10 million or $2 million to $20 million. 

Please write to me at george@blackburne.com.  So I don't miss it, would you please make the Subject Line, "Bridge Lender(s) For You."

A lady was picking through the frozen turkeys at the grocery store, but couldn't find one big enough for her family.  She asked a butcher, "Do these turkeys get any bigger?"  The butcher replied, "No, ma'am, they're dead."

Where to Find Bankers

It's easy to find 20 bona fide bankers to trade to C-Loans, Inc. for our wonderful, 9-hour video training course, How to Broker Commercial Loans.

Before I explain how, there is an even more important reason why you want to build your own list of bankers. The single best way to market for commercial loans is to advertise to commercial bankers.

Why? The first place a potential commercial mortgage borrower calls is his own banker, so the typical commercial real estate loan officer, working for a bank, gets two or three such calls per day. He turns down 80% of these commercial loan requests. There is no reason why he can't refer them to you.

Okay, so how do you find these these bankers? I recommend that you start with those banks that are located close to your office. These banks are very easy to find. Simply go to Google Maps and type in the address of your office. Then click the "Nearby" icon and type in, "Banks." Every bank within 50 miles of your office will pop up.

Then call the bank and ask to speak with a commercial real estate loan officer. The typical bank has a single commercial real estate loan officer covering five or six branches, so he will likely work out of a different branch. Then work with the loan officer or receptionist to obtain his phone number (try to get both work and mobile), address, and email address.

The email address is critical, and sometimes bankers are a little freaky-deaky about giving it out. They are worried about being spammed. The best way to ask for a banker's email address is to ask, "If I wanted to send you a commercial loan summary, to which email address should I send it?"

A white-haired old man walked into a jewelry store on a Friday, with a beautiful young lady at his side.  "I'm looking for a special ring for my girlfriend," he said. Our jeweler looked through our stock and took out an outstanding ring priced at $5,000.  "I don't think you understand.  I want something very unique," the man said.  At that, our now very excited jeweler went and fetched our special stock from the safe. "Here's one stunning ring at $40,000."

The girls eyes sparkled, and the man said that he would take it.  How are you paying?" asked our jeweler.  “I'll pay by check; but of course the bank will want to make sure that everything is in order, so I'll write a check and you can phone the bank tomorrow, and then I'll fetch the ring on Monday," replied the old man.

Monday morning, our very disappointed jeweler phoned the man. "You lied, there's no money in that account."  "I know - sorry - but can you imagine what a FANTASTIC weekend I had?!"

Twenty years ago, if you wanted a commercial loan, you might have applied to a savings and loan association, a thrift and loan association, or even a credit company.  None of these company types are making many commercial loans today; so I am not even going to bother to describe them.  They have gone the way of the buffalo.

All new commercial lenders have entered the commercial loan market.  I will describe each type of commercial lender active in the market today, starting with the ones with the lowest interest rates.

Life Companies:

The term, life company, is short for life insurance company.  For the last 50 years, life companies have always offered the absolute lowest commercial loan interest rates.

Life companies offer fixed interest rates for up to ten years at rates as low as 175 to 200 basis points (1.75% to 2%) over ten-year Treasuries.  That's the good news about life companies.  The bad news is that life companies do not lend to mortals like you and me.

In order the qualify for a commercial loan from a life company, the loan must usually be larger than $5 million, the property must usually be less than ten years old, it must usually be located in a primary location in a football team city, and the property must usually be office, retail, or industrial.  The property also has to be gorgeous, and the maximum loan-to-value ratio that you are likely to achieve is 55% to 58% LTV.

Like I said, life companies do not lend to folks like you and me.  They lend to investors so stinking wealthy that they don't want a lot of leverage.  They want the cash flow.

Conduits:

A conduit is short for Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduit ("REMIC").  A conduit is a specialized commercial mortgage company that originates large commercial real estate loans for their eventual placement in the Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities ("CMBS") market.

These conduit loans are aggregated in a giant pool of $2 billion or so, and then bonds, backed by the commercial mortgages in the pool, are issued and sold off by Wall Street-like investment bankers to life companies, pension plans, family trusts, bond funds, and other institutional investors.

The good news about conduit lenders is that their interest rates are only about 75 basis points (0.75%) higher than those offered by life companies.  Conduits will also lend in secondary locations in fairly large cities not quite large enough to have a football team.  In addition, the property does NOT need to look like a color, glossy postcard.

The bad news about conduits is that their minimum loan size is large - typically $4 million+.  In addition, their loan-to-value ratios are pretty low.  CMBS investors got hammered during the Great Recession, so conduit lenders now use a commercial loan underwriting ratio that few other commercial lenders use.  This ratio is the Debt Yield Ratio.

Ever feel useless?

A Debt Yield Ratio of 9% limits many conduit loans to a maximum loan-to-value ratio of around 65% to 68%.  This is not the the kind leverage that most investors are seeking.  As a result, conduit loan originations in the past several years have been no more than 40% of their pre-2008 loan volume.

We will cover Commercial Banks, Credit Unions, Wall Street Non-Prime Lenders, Bridge Lenders, and Hard Money Lenders in coming blog articles.