Commercial Loans and Fun Blog

Today you are going to learn a ton today about business financing.  By business financing, I mean commercial loans NOT secured by real estate.

As you know, I already own a very successful commercial mortgage portal named C-Loans.com.  C-Loans has now closed over 1,000 commercial real estate loans totaling over $1 billion.  But it wasn't easy to build this portal.  It took us six, long, painful, heart-breaking years to reach profitability.

We are now in the process of building a business financing portal.  Our plan is to use all of the lessons and much of the software that we used to build C-Loans to build a portal for business owners who need financing - accounts receivable financing, factoring, equipment leases, equipment financing, lines of credit, and about a dozen other forms of specialized business loans.  We have purchased the wonderful domains, CommercialLoans.com and CommercialLoan.com, to use for this new venture.

Okay, so I interviewed today a good friend, named Scott Jordan, of All Credit Lending Solutions.  Scott's business is almost the exact opposite of mine.  While I make all of my dough in commercial real estate finance, Scott makes almost 100% of his dough in business finance.

I took careful notes during my interview with Scott, and today's blog post is largely a data dump of everything Scott taught me.  I learned a ton, and I promise that so will you.  This is not a primer on the entire subject of business financing.  It's more a short collection of topics upon which he tutored me.

Business Lines of Credit:

Prior to the Great Recession, many commercial banks used to regularly make these loans - up to about $50,000 ($100,000).  The size of the line of credit was often based on the amount of the company's monthly sales, and sometimes the line of credit was even unsecured.

Since the crash, the appetite of commercial banks for such loans has greatly diminished.

Collateral Based Loans:

Collateral based loans are when the lender takes physical possession of the asset and lends you some modest percentage of its value.  There are lots of different names for collateral based loans - Pawn Loans, Car Title Loans, Asset Based Loans, and perhaps a layman would understand the term, Hard Goods Loans.

Examples of hard goods that could be serve as collateral for small commercial loans are car titles, truck titles, heavy equipment titles, boats, artwork, jewelry, gold, rings, and household goods worth at least $10,000.

Collateral based loans are very expensive, typically between 3% to 5% per month.  They are intended only to be short-term loans.

There are even a number of online collateral based lenders, the largest being PawnGo.com.  You send them the asset, they inspect it, and then they make you an offer.

Cash Advance Commercial Loans (Cash Advances):

Cash advance lenders are a newer breed of business lender that makes commercial loans to companies that make lots of regular daily sales.  They will examine your company bank statements or merchant account statements, and then they will lend you a certain percentage (65%?) of your average monthly balance.

A merchant account is a type of bank account that allows businesses to accept payments by payment cards, typically debit or credit cards.  A merchant account is an agreement made between the business/seller, the bank where the merchant account is held, and the payment processor to settle all transactions made by debit and credit cards. The fees associated with these accounts are usually in the following categories: monthly, discount rate and transaction. The rate that a business is charged for debit and credit card services provided by its merchant account is called a merchant discount rate.

The interesting thing about a cash advance commercial loan is that the commercial lender will suck out a small, regular, loan payment from your business account every business day!

Asset-Based Line of Credit (ABL Loan):

An ABL lender will secure his commercial loan, and base the size of his commercial loan, by the amount of your company's accounts receivables, plus a certain percentage of the value of your inventory (35%?), plus a certain percentage of the value of your fixed equipment (35%?).

An ABL loan is often better than factoring your receivables because you don't have to pay as large of a monthly discount if you are not using the money.  You only pay interest when you have borrowed money on the line of credit.

ABL loans are not cheap.  The very best borrower will pay at least Prime + 4%, and interest rates of Prime + 10% are far more common.  Nevertheless, an ABL loan is cheaper than factoring, and you may be able to borrow more money.

Crowdfunding:

Crowdfunding is the collective effort of individuals, who network and pool their money, usually via the Internet, to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations.  Crowdfunding is used in support of a wide variety of activities, including disaster relief, citizen journalism, support of artists by fans, political campaigns, startup company funding, motion picture promotion, free software development, inventions development, scientific research, and civic projects.

Crowdfunding can also refer to the funding of a company by selling small amounts of equity to many investors. This form of crowdfunding has recently received attention from policymakers in the United States, with direct mention in the JOBS Act - legislation that allows for a wider pool of small investors with fewer restrictions.  (In my opinion, the JOBS Act is the single most beneficial piece of Federal legislation passed in the past 50 years.  The positive effect on innovation and job creation in the U.S. is going to be huge.)

Peer-to-Peer Lending:

Peer-to-peer lending is the practice of lending money to unrelated individuals, or "peers", without going through a traditional financial intermediary such as a bank or other traditional financial institution. This lending takes place online on peer-to-peer lending companies' websites using various different lending platforms and credit checking tools.

Using various P2P lending websites - such as Prosper.com and LendingClub.com - wealthy, accredited, private investors are making personal loans directly to borrowers, with either a dozen or more individuals investing together in a single loan or with a single private investor making the entire loan.  Typical loans are 9.9% to 13.9%, fully-amortized over a three to five year term.

So what's the difference between crowdfunding and peer-to-peer lending?  Crowdfunding raises equity, while P2P lending creates debt.

Using Linked-In:

So I asked my buddy, Scott, where he got his leads.  Do you get most of your business financing deals from brokers.  "No," he replied, "brokers only account for about 25% of my business.  Seventy-five percent of my business comes from business borrowers directly - word of mouth, my website, referrals, and Linked-In.  Linked-In is huge for me."

So how do you get business from Linked-In?  I don't personally participate on Linked-In, but Alicia Gandy in our Sacramento office - we call her The Loan Goddess because she is our biggest producer - gets a ton of business from Linked-In.

Scott replied, "I join lots of groups.  Also, if I see someone with a successful business in the newspaper, I'll send him an invitation to link with me on Linked-In.  Seventy-five percent of the people that I invite agree to link to me."

Great advice, Scott!  Great lessons.  Thank you.

Do you need a business loan not secured by real estate?  Please call my buddy:

Scott Jordan
All Credit Lending Solutions
303-887-2570
sjordan@allcreditls.com

Important reminder:

Sooner or later you are going to be working on a conventional commercial first mortgage, and the bank is only going to be willing to lend up to 63% loan-to-value.  Your borrower needs 75% loan-to-value financing.  Our new Preferred Equity Loan program will solve your problem.

A purchase money commercial loan is a commercial loan that is used to buy a commercial property and which is secured by the same property.  For example, if you refinanced your free-and-clear apartment building to buy a strip center, the new loan on the apartment building would NOT be considered a purchase money loan, even though the proceeeds were used to buy a commercial property.

Most purchase money commercial loans these days are SBA loans.  If an established and profitable business wants to buy a larger facility, in order to expand and hire more workers, the SBA will guarantee a large portion of that loan.  The buyer would only have to put down 10% of the purchase price (the new commercial loan would be 90% loan-to-value).

The opposite of an SBA loan is a conventional commercial mortgage loan.  A conventional commercial mortgage loan is a commercial loan made with no government guarantee.  By the way, the SBA is not the only Federal governmental agency that guarantees commercial loans.  Don't forget that the USDA also guarantees commercial loans using its Business and Industry loan program.  A USDA Business and Industry Loan is a commercial real estate loan, guaranteed by the USDA up to 90% LTV, and made in a rural, lowly-populated area, that will create more jobs in the rural area.

So a conventional commercial mortgage loan is a commercial mortgage loan that is not guaranteed by the SBA or the USDA.  Most conventional commercial mortgage loans are made by either commercial banks or conduits.  A commercial bank is just a garden variety bank, as opposed to an investment bank or a merchant bank.  The word "commercial" is just a fancy word for "business" and signifies that the bank is in business to make a profit.

An investment bank is a company that sells stocks and bonds and occasionally takes companies public.  A merchant bank is usually a small group of very wealthy investors - guys who often own a bank or life insurance company together - who use their excess profits to make equity investments in risky, potentially high-yielding investments.  There are probably fewer than 200 merchant banking companies in the whole country, and you'll probably never get to meet one.  If you ever meet a so-called "merchant banker" at some commercial lending conference, the chances are 20:1 that he is a con man, an advance fee scammer, and/or a huge slinger of bull-pucky.  Mortals like you and me don't get to meet real merchant bankers.

Purchase money commercial loans are often used to buy commercial investment properties.  Examples of commercial investment properties include apartment buildings, office buildings, shopping centers, strip centers, mobile home parks, and self storage facilities.  They are properties where the income comes - not from running a business, like a restaurant or a bowling alley - but rather from plain-vanilla monthly rent.  Commercial investment properties are purchased by real estate investors, rather than business owners.

Now we are finally getting to the point of this article.  If a real estate investor wants to purchase a commercial investment property, like a multi-tenant office building, right now, the typical bank is going to require a huge downpayment.  Why?  Because commercial banks are too scared to lend higher than 58% to 62% loan-to-value on commercial investment properties.

To make matters worse, commercial banks will not let the seller carry back a second mortgage.  Why?  They don't want to over-burden the property with debt.  They are afraid that if a tenant or two moves out and the cash flow dwindles, the commercial property owner might be tempted to use the cash flow earmarked for repairs and maintenance to make the payments on the second mortgage.  Soon the property becomes dilapidated.

This means that buyers of commercial investment properties today have to put between 38% to 42% down in cash!  Who has this kind of cash?

Now if the purchase price is huge, say $15 million or higher, the buyer will probably use a conduit loan (aka: CMBS loan).  Behind the conduit loan, the buyer will often take out a mezzanine loan of $3 million to $5 million.  Then the buyer will put just 25% down in cash.  The mezzanine loan fills the gap in the capital stack between 65% LTV (the maximum exposure of a CMBS loan) and 75% loan-to-value.

A mezzanine loan is not a second mortgage.  Instead, its a personal property loan against the membership interests of the LLC that owns one of these big, trophy commercial properties.  Remember, a share of stock is personal property, not real property.  A membership interest in an LLC is also personal property, not real property.  Seizures (foreclosures) of personal property can be completed in less than six weeks.  Real estate foreclosures can take 18 to 24 months in New York and many other states.  This why these junior lenders make mezzanine loans, rather than second mortgages.

Therefore, if your investor is buying some huge, trophy commercial investment property for more than $15 million, he can probably get away with putting down as little as 25% of the purchase price, by using a CMBS loan, capped off by a mezzanine loan.

Unfortunately, mezzanine loans are legally very complicated.  The legal fees alone can exceed $60,0000.  As a result, few mezzanine lenders will make mezzanine loans of less $5 million (maybe $3 million).

Therefore, if a buyer of a commercial investment property is paying less $10 million to $15 million, he has a real problem.  A commercial banks will only lend up to 58% to 62% LTV.  This means he has to put down 38% to 42% of the purchase price.  Not surprisingly, few smaller commercial investment properties are changing hands.

Until now.

Blackburne & Sons has just come out with an earth-shattering new commercial capital program.  Our hard money mortgage company is now making Preferred Equity "Loans" from $100,000 to $600,000 nationwide.

Preferred Equity is actually not a loan.  It's an equity investment.  Legally we become part owners of the property; but we are only entitled to a Preferred Return that looks almost identical to garden-variety interest.  Banks will allow Preferred Equity in "second position" because our payments are NOT required.  If the property doesn't generate enough cash flow some month to make the Preferred Equity payments, the payments do NOT have to be made.  

Don't worry about it if you are largely lost.  At the end of this article, I'm going to give you a link to brand new white paper that explains Preferred Equity in layman's language.

Here's what you need to know:  Commercial investment real estate is about to explode.  There has been virtually no new commercial construction for six years.  In the meantime, the U.S. has become the world's largest producer of oil.  We have so much natural gas, and its so stinking cheap, that our heavy manufacturers have an enormous competitive advantage over every other country in the world.  The U.S. economy - but for this miserable winter - should be exploding in production and hiring.  It will happen this Spring.

Folks, I am the guy who warned you for a decade that a deflationary depression was coming.  It came, but the Great Recession is over now.  Commercial real estate is poised, after a 45% decline during the Great Recession, to march upwards for a decade.

Commercial real estate values are going to appreciate, and lots of investors are going to want to buy some.  You won't be able to close any purchase money deals unless you find some company who can close the gap in the capital stack between 60% and 75%.  This what our new Preferred Equity program does.

Folks, our new tiny Preferred Equity Program is the most important development in real estate finance since the second mortgage.  You must - you absolutely MUST - download this free white paper and become more comfortable with Preferred Equity.  It is the only way you will close purchase money commercial investment loans for the next five years.

A Special Use Property (aka: Single-Purpose Property) is a property whose design, construction, and use precludes uses other than that for which it was built.

When underwriting commercial loans on these types of properties, it is most important to understand there is never a defined list of Special Use Properties.  Instead the underwriter must be able to recognize the characteristics of the property, which make it Special Use.

For example:

• The property is not easily converted, in terms of costs, to another use.
• The zoning restricts the use.
• The property and repayment could be affected by trends, operation, equipment or cash flow.

Once you recognize that the property is Special Use, approach the valuation carefully.  You need to find an expert in the area for that type of property with proven competency. Know what kind of value you are looking for - Real Estate Only or Going-Concern Value.  Will the FF&E’s have any value?  You may need to research conversion costs.

It's important to know the operator of the property.  Who is the key person?  What is their experience?  What education or specialization is necessary?

What is the history of the company?  Have they always been in that location?  Is there a history? Is it a good story or well-grounded?

Sometimes its important to know the supplies used, the raw materials, and the suppliers.

Anticipate disasters, such as a ski resort with a no-snow year, a vineyard with a drought, or E-Coli at a restaurant.  Look at the company's track record.  Do they have the cash reserves to survive?

What is your exit strategy?  Have this in place.   Your exit strategy should be different from your borrower's exit strategy.  Is long term funding needed for the deal to work?  Can it be short term?

To mitigate risk follow the Big 5:

1. Reduce the LTV
2. Take additional security
3. Obtain solid guarantees
4. Include good operating covenants
5. Don’t make the loan 

Here are some other important considerations:

1. Who will come to OUR rescue?
2. Is there a dumber lender?
3. Will the guarantors really make a difference?

When making a commercial loan on a Special Use Property, you should include loan covenants, such as operating ratios, “no dark” provisions, periodic inspections and reports.  For example, if you have a storage facility request, you may want to obtain bi-annual reports of tenant names and information.  On properties with septic tanks and wells, require periodic inspections.

And last, but arguably most important, what is the mortgage history of the borrower?  Were his last two loans private money loans?  Did he take cash out each time?  What was his payment history?  You have to look at it as the borrower is not operating well if he needs to keep getting private loans.  Why?  Is he not making money?  Is he not good with his finances?

If you have a balloon payment coming due on your commercial property, or if you are trying to buy an investment property, and you don't have a whopping 42% of the purchase price to put down in cash, this article is super-important to you.

Preferred equity is a wonderful form of commercial real estate capital that can save your bacon, whether you're a commercial loan broker or a commercial real estate investor.  Some examples will hammer home this critical concept.

Let's suppose that you're a commercial real estate investor.  You make your living buying and leasing out office buildings and shopping centers.  In 2004, you paid $2.6 million for a strip center in Los Angeles.  You put down $650,000 (25%) and took out a $1,950,000 new first mortgage from Ruby Bank.  This new commercial first mortgage had a 10-year term.

It's now the year 2014.  Your $1,950,000 first mortgage is ballooning, and you realize that you have a problem.  During the trough of the Great Recession, your $2.6 million strip center had fallen in value to just $2 million.  Fortunately, with the recovery, your strip center is now worth $2.5 million; but that's not enough.

The problem is that few commercial banks will make commercial real estate loans in excess of 58% to 63% loan-to-value today.  Even if you could convince a bank to make you a loan of $1,575,000 (63% of $2.5 million), the proceeds of the loan won't be enough to pay off your $1,950,000 existing first mortgage.  Yikes!

Even forgetting about points and closing costs, you will be short a whopping $375,000.  The bank will expect you to bring the shortfall to the closing; but you don't have $375,000 in cash!  You barely survived the Great Recession without losing any property.  To make matters worse, you personally guaranteed the loan from Ruby Bank.  You're in deep trouble.  Your dog could leave you, and your wife could bite you.

You sit down with your banker, and you ask him, "What if I could find a hard money lender to make a $375,000 second mortgage?"  The banker replies, "Commercial banks won't allow second mortgages behind their commercial first mortgages these days.  They don't want the propety overburdened with debt.  The danger is that if the owner's cash flow gets tight, he might be tempted to use the money earmarked for repairs and maintenance to make the payments on the second mortgage.  The property will fall into disrepair, the tenants will move out, and the bank will end up foreclosing on a run-down, vacant strip center with a leaking roof and mold all over it."

"What am I going to do?" you ask the banker.  The banker replies, "You need to find a partner to contribute $375,000 in cash to the deal, in return for a partial ownership of the building."  So you go to your brother-in-law, begging for cash, only to find out that he is as impoverished as you are.

Fortunately you find Blackburne & Sons, the only realty capital provider in the country making small preferred equity investments (its easier to think of them as preferred equity loans), from $100,000 to $600,000.  Most preferred equity providers won't even look at deals smaller than $3 million.

Blackburne & Sons agrees to invest $300,000 in preferred equity into your property, bringing the preferred equity capital stack (the sum of the first mortgage plus the preferred equity) up to 75% of value.  This means that you, the owner, still have to bring to the closing table $75,000 in cash, but this smaller amount is far more manageable.  It sure beats defaulting on your balloon payment and getting sued for the deficiency.

Here's another example of how preferred equity can save your bacon:

You're a commercial loan broker.  You have a wealthy commecial real estate investor who wants to buy an office building in Pleasanton, California for $3 million.  Your customer is insisting on a new permanent loan of 75% loan-to-value, but of the 13 banks that you have approached, none of them would lend more than 63% of the purchase price.  Your buyer refuses to put down more than $750,000, but the bank won't lend more than $1,890,000.  You are short $360,000, but the bank won't even allow the seller to carry back a second mortgage.  You're at loggerheads.

A $360,000 preferred equity investment from Blackburne & Sons can save this deal, along with your $22,750 commission (1 point).

Why would the bank allow a $360,000 preferred equity investment, but not a $360,000 second mortgage from the seller?  Preferred equity is NOT a loan.  If the buyer doesn't have the cash flow to make the preferred equity yield payments, he doesn't have to make them.  They simply accrue and defer.  The buyer doesn't have to neglect the needed repairs on the property in order to make the payments.  This is the critical distinction between a second mortgage loan and a preferred equity investment.

Preferred equity is not cheap.  It will cost the borrower between 16% and 22% annually, plus an 8 point investment banking fee to raise the capital.  The investment term is five years.  If the buyer does not pay us off at that time, the property will be sold to pay off the preferred equity investment.  Any remaining profit goes to the buyer.

Why is preferred equity so expensive?  Preferred equity competes against private money first mortgage investments, which can yield up to 12% to 14%.  Clearly a $300,000 preferred equity investment behind a $2.5 million first mortgage from the bank is far-far more risky than a $300,000 hard money first mortgage investment.  Suppose the tenants move out?  The monthly payments on the underlying first mortgage from the bank could be $14,000 per month.  Imagine making $14,000 monthly payments, month after month, as you deperately try to find new tenants.

But there is good news.  Blackburne & Sons can be bought out at any time for what is "owed"; i.e., its original investment, any advances, interest on the advances, plus a 17% per annum preferred equity yield on the original investment.  If our deal were a loan, you would say that our loan had no prepayment penalty.

An example will make this more clear.  Let's suppose that Robert Buyer teams up with Blackburne & Sons to buy for $1 million a small row retail building in downtown Palo Alto, California.  Mr. Buyer puts up $250,000 and Blackburne & Sons puts up $120,000 in a preferred equity position.  The bank makes a new commercial loan of $630,000.  The agreed-upon preferred equity return is 17%.

Just weeks after we buy the property, Apple Computer decides to buy this entire block in Palo Alto as part of their campus.  Apple agrees to pay a ridiculous sum, a whopping $2 million.  The all-cash deal closes just 10 days later.  The equity holders get to split a cool $1 million profit.  But who gets what?

The profit distribution plan of an equity venture is called a waterfall.  In this case, the first equity investor to be repaid its $120,000 principal investment is Blackburne & Sons.  Is there any more left over?  Yup, there's TONS of money left over.  Okay, so Robert Buyer gets back his $250,000 principal investment.  Is there any money left over?  Yes.

Therefore, Blackburne & Sons earns its preferred return of 17% annually (prorated for 37 days), so we earn a whopping $397.  The balance of the $1 million profit ($999,603) goes to Robert Buyer!

Preferred equity capital is expensive.  Therefore the wise borrower will repay Blackburne & Sons at the fastest possible pace.

Are you a commercial mortgage banker?  If so, you would be wise to heed my words here.  This is a brand new program, and no one in the marketplace knows about it.  Using our preferred equity, you can give your buyers and borrowers more leverage that any other mortgage banker in the country.  This gives you a HUGE marketing advantage.  In commercial real estate finance, the commercial mortgage banker who wins the deal and earns the fee is often NOT the guy with the lowest rate, but rather the guy who offers his borrowers the most dollars.

So be smart here.  Promote the heck out of this program!

Commercial loans are still quite hard to close these days.  Here are ten practical tips that will help you qualify for a commercial loan:

1. Instead of calling random commercial mortgage companies for your commercial real estate loan, focus your phone calls on commercial banks.  Commercial banks make the most number of commercial loans these days.  You can also save yourself countless phone calls by simply using C-Loans.com.
    
2. Don't forget about credit unions.  Credit unions, who historically never made commercial loans, have come out of nowhere to seize 5% of the commercial real estate lending market over the past two years.
    
3. Use local lenders.  Many commercial mortgage borrowers are under the mistaken belief that some mystical nationwide commercial lender offers lower rates than a local bank.  This is simply untrue.  You'll get your best commercial mortgage deal from a commercial lender located close to the subject property.
    
4. You can find all of the banks and credit unions located close to your commercial property by merely plotting your property on maps.google.com.  In the left column you'll see a photo.  Click the hyperplink underneath the photo that says, "Search Nearby."  Simply enter "banks" and hit return.
    
5. If you are trying to buy a commercial property, and you don't qualify for an SBA loan, you are about to discover that you have a problem.  Most commercial banks will not make conventional (non-SBA) commercial mortgage loans in excess of 58% to 63% loan-to-value these days.  This means that you have to put 37% to 42% down.  Yikes!  Who has that kind of money?
    
6. You can solve this problem by using preferred equity investments from Blackburne & Sons.
    
7. What if you have a $2 million balloon payment coming due on your commercial property, but the bank will only lend you $1.6 million?  A $400,000 preferred equity loan from Blackburne & Sons might save your property.  (Technically our $400,000 is not a loan but rather an equity investment; but its easier to think of it as a tiny mezzanine loan.)
    
8. If you are in the commercial loan business, make sure you are building your list of referral contacts every day.  I am a huge fan of list advertising.  The cold weather has greatly slowed commercial loan demand this winter, but my own commercial mortgage company, Blackburne & Sons, was able to respond by doubling the number of email newsletters and fax newsletters that we send out every day.  I am pleased to report that we did this, and my loan officers are once again deliciously buried with commercial loans.
    
9. Don't give up on your commercial mortgage newsletters too soon.  Your first five newsletters may not generate a single lead, but if you send out a fun, folksy, unprofessional commercial loan newsletter every 10 to 21 days religiously, your sixth newsletter will be a hit.  I  promise you!  Why?  It takes a while for The Newsletter Effect to kick in, but once it does, it is a powerful force.  This is what happened to my own son, Tom.  "Dad, these stupid newsletters aren't working.  No one is calling."  Then his sixth newsletter hit.  Bam!  His phone have been ringing like crazy ever since.  I've got to tell you, it felt good to be vindicated in front of my own son.  Need more help with your commercial mortgage marketing?
    
10. You could easily be closing three times more commercial loans than you are today, but you keep making 67 different mistakes.  I recently finished my training masterpiece, my Commercial Mortgage Broker Practice Course.  The course contains 67 different, very practical lessons on commercial mortgage brokerage, including the very first thing to say to a commercial lender when you call him to run a deal by him and including the single most important lesson in all of commercial real estate finance.  It's a five-hour audio course, designed to be listened to in your car on long drives.  Ideally you should listen to it at least five times, but if you listen to it just three times, I promise you will triple your income as a commercial mortgage broker.  "But George, I'm as poor as a church mouse right now.  I can't afford $199."  No problemo.  Simply submit two commercial loans using C-Loans.com and earn $100 Blackburne Bucks for each submission.  Then you can buy this amazing course without it costing you one penny out of pocket.  Folks, it will change your life!

If you are a conventional buyer of commercial real estate, or if you are a commercial broker, this article is VERY important to you.  The reason is because you are about to discover a BIG problem with your next commercial real estate loan.

It is very hard these days for a buyer or a commercial broker to put together a conventional purchase of an investment property, like an office building or a shopping center.  Banks today will only make commercial mortgage loans up to around 58% to 63% loan-to-value.  This means the buyer of a commercial property - assuming he can't get an SBA loan - has to put 37% to 42% down in cash.  Who has that kind of money?

The good news is that Blackburne & Sons has a wonderful new commercial loan product - more precisely a preferred equity investment - that will solve this problem for you.

Why are the banks so conservative when underwriting commercial real estate loans today?  Many commercial banks lost a ton of money in commercial real estate loans during the Great Recession.  These banks watched in horror as commercial real estate fell in value by 45%.  In addition, the portfolios of many commercial banks are too heavily invested in commercial loans today.  Why?  They can't get these legacy loans (loans written before the Great Recession) off the books.  Although the vast majority of these legacy loans are current, a great many of them are past maturity, and they exceed 85% loan-to-value, based on today's lower values.  Yikes!

To make matter worse, not only will few banks make commercial loans that exceed 58% to 63% loan-to-value, these banks will NOT allow junior financing (a second mortgage).  In other words, the seller cannot carry back a second mortgage.  The banks don't want to see these commercial properties over-burdened with debt.

"Okay, George, you promised me the cure for this problem.  Let's hear it."

Blackburne & Sons will add its dough to the buyer's downpayment to come up with the 37% to 42% required by the bank.  Typically the buyer will come up with the first 20% to 25%, and we'll come up with the rest.  In return, Blackburne & Sons will take a preferred equity investment in the property.

A preferred equity investment is NOT a second mortgage or even a mezzanine loan.  It's an equity investment.  The buyer of the property is not promising to pay any interest rate to the preferred equity investor, nor is he promising to even repay the preferred equity investor's original investment.  Repayment is dependent on the success of the real estate venture.

If the real estate venture is successful, however, the first equity investor to be repaid is the preferred equity investor.  He's special (said in the voice of the Church Lady from Saturday Night Live).  The original buyer of the property - who owns what is known as the common equity - only gets paid any profit after the preferred equity investor gets repaid his original investment, plus the agreed-upon preferred return.

An example will make this more clear.  Let's suppose that Robert Buyer teams up with Blackburne & Sons to buy for $1 million a small row retail building in downtown Palo Alto, California.  Mr. Buyer puts up $250,000 and Blackburne & Sons puts up $120,000 in a preferred equity position.  The bank makes a new commercial loan of $630,000.  The agreed-upon preferred equity return is 17%.

Just weeks after we buy the property, Apple Computer decides to buy this entire block in Palo Alto as part of their campus.  Apple agrees to pay a ridiculous sum, a whopping $2 million.  The all-cash deal closes just 30 days later.  The equity holders get to split a cool $1 million profit.  But who gets what?

The profit distribution plan of an equity venture is called a waterfall.  In this case, the first equity investor to be repaid its $120,000 principal investment is Blackburne & Sons.  Is there any more left over?  Yup, there's TONS of money left over.  Okay, so Robert Buyer gets back his $250,000 principal investment.  Is there any money left over?  Yes.

Therefore, Blackburne & Sons earns its preferred return of 17% annually (prorated for 37 days), so we earn a whopping $397.  The balance of the $1 million profit ($999,603) goes to Robert Buyer!

An important and very favorable point to notice here is that Blackburne & Sons can be bought out at any time for our original principal, plus its preferred return (17% annually in this example) since inception, compounded, with no prepayment penalty!

Let's look at another example.  Let's suppose we buy together a multi-tenant office building.  Unfortunately two of the seven tenants move out.  Therefore the property is not bringing in the kind of income that we projected.  Fortunately the property is making enough money to service the first mortgage, plus there is enough to pay the preferred equity investors a 5% return, but not the agreed 17% preferred return.

What happens?  Can Blackburne & Sons sue Robert Buyer?  No!  Remember, Mr. Buyer never promised Blackburne & Sons any sort of return, not even a return of its $120,000 principal investment.  All Blackburne & Sons can do legally is fire Mr. Buyer and bring in a more competent property manager.

What happens to the unpaid preferred return?  It accrues, defers, and compounds at 17%.  When the property sells, any profit will first be applied towards these arrearages.

"Okay, George, what you're describing is pretty garden-variety preferred equity.  What's so special about your program?"

The unique thing about Blackburne & Sons' Preferred Equity Program is that we will make TINY deals.  Most preferred equity providers have a $3 million minimum.  Blackburne & Sons will only make preferred equity investments of between $100,000 and $600,000.

"How much does your equity cost?"

Each deal is individually priced, so a lot depends on the deal.  Deals in California are much cheaper.  Attractive properties are cheaper.  In these equity investment deals, the CV (curriculum vitae or the business resume) of the buyer matters a lot.

That being said, most deals will cost between 16% and 22% annually and eight origination points.  Keep in mind that these preferred equity investments are tiny-tiny amounts, especially when compared to the bank's new first mortgage.  If he can borrow $630,000 at only 4.75% and $120,000 at 17%, the buyer's weighted average cost of funds is dirt cheap (6.71%).   Also remember that the buyer can buy out Blackburne & Sons at any time.

"How do we get started?

Just call your Blackburne & Sons loan officer or call Angela Vannucci, Vice President and Equity Division Manager, at 916-338-3232.

Nobody is applying for commercial loans right now.  In my 33 years in the commercial loan business, I have seldom seen the commercial real estate finance industry so dead.

Commercial loan demand today is almost as bad as in 1982, when the prime rate dropped from 21.5% to just 14% over about a year.  Good luck trying to convince a borrower to apply for a commercial loan when interest rates are falling by 1% a month!

When interest rates are falling, commercial mortgage borrowers proscrastinate because interest rates will only be lower the following month.

My commercial mortgage company (Blackburne & Sons was founded in 1980) almost failed in 1982 because new commercial loan applications that year were almost completely nonexistent.  If my sweet mother had not loaned me some dough, my commercial mortgage company would have failed.

Today's darth of commercial loan demand is fortunately weather related.  It will pass when the weather improves.  Those of you in sunny California just don't appreciate how bad the weather is for much of the country.  The cold, the snow, and the wind chill are so bad here in Plymouth, Indiana that everyone was confined to their homes for four of the last seven days.  One local resident, I heard, was fined $500 when his car slipped off the road and went into a ditch, on a day when road travel was banned.

My point is that no one wants to think about applying for a commercial loan when the weather is this bad.  When the weather improves, commercial loan demand should come roaring back.

I wrote a blog article earlier in the week where I pointed out the advantage of marketing for commercial loans using lists (email, fax, and snail mail).  The nice thing about list advertising is that you can quickly send out a newsletter to your contacts when your commercial loan business gets slow.  In contrast, if your sole source of commercial leads is through magazine ads, you may have to wait for weeks until the next magazine issue goes out.

Anyway, one of my regular readers wrote to me this week and complained that he had gotten virtually no response from his newsletter campaigns.  Here is the thing about newsletters:    Commercial mortgage newsletters do not even start to pull until the sixth newsletter. 

Why is this?  I dunno.  It's just a fact of life that I have observed over the past 33 years in the commercial mortgage business.

But what I can tell you - and you can take this to the bank - is that:

If you send out a fun, personal, folksy, intentionally-unprofessional newsletter, every ten days to every three weeks, for at least six times religiously (with no gaps), pretty soon your recipients will consider you one of their best friends.  They will consider themselves to be the backup Godparents of your children, and they will swear that they have known you for years (even though you have only been marketing to them for seven months).

I call this special bonding effect, The Newsletter Effect.  In my training classes I compare the strength and intensity of this bond to The Stockholm Syndrome, that strange, emotional bond that was built between the terrorists and their hostages back in the 1970's.

Your newsletters have to be fun, so you can condition your customers to actually open your newsletters and read them.  I always include tons of fun stuff (Rat Goodies) in my newsletters, like jokes, funny pics, and links to great videos.  In fact, I think of my newsletters like a TV show, with only an occasional and brief word from our sponsor.

So to my regular reader, the reason your newsletter campaign failed was because you had too many time-gaps between your newsletters (it wasn't regular enough), and you gave up on sending them MUCH too soon.  You need at least six newsletters for The Newsletter Effect to take effect.  It is on the sixth newsletter and beyond when the leads finally start to come in.

My own son - Doubting Thomas - was losing heart in his own newsletters.  "They aren't working, Dad!" Then his sixth newsletter went out, and - BOOM - lead calls finally started pouring in for him.

Another loyal subscriber to my Commercial Loans Blog asked, "To whom should I send out my newsletters, George?"

It depends on whether you are using snail mail (which costs money) or email, which is essentially free.  If you are using snail mail, I recommend that you should only spend the money to send out your newsletters to people who see lots of commercial loan applications every month because of their jobs.  This includes bankers, commercial real estate brokers, property managers, residential mortgage brokers (on a name and number referral basis only), residential realtors, attorneys (who know you personally), CPA's (who know you personally), and life insurance agents. 

If you are using email newsletters you should add every wealthy real estate investor you meet in the regular course of business, even if you only quote a loan to him.  If you are diligent, you can build a book of two or three thousand commercial real estate investors in a couple of years.  Then, if you never fail to send an email newsletter every three weeks, you will have a booming commercial loan business that you can someday pass on to your own sons and daughters.

I read all of your comments to my blog articles, so if you have other questions and topics that you would like me to cover, please just post a comment.  And thanks for being a regular reader!  :-)

Obtaining a commercial real estate loan these days is VERY expensive.  There are lender points.  There are broker points.  There is an appraisal of the property by a General Certified Appraiser or an MAI appraiser.  There is the toxic report.  There is the survey and the title commitment.  Some commercial lenders want an engineering report, and some even require a maximum probable loss (earthquake) report.  There are also closing costs, like attorney's fees, escrow costs, and title insurance.  The last thing a commercial property owner wants to do is to pay these fees and costs all over again when he gets a new commercial loan.

Unfortunately a commercial mortgage borrower cannot always choose when to refinance his property.  He might have a balloon payment coming due at an unfortunate time when 40% of his rentable space is vacant.  A fix-and-flipper may run out of dough, when his renovation is only 80% complete.  The timing sucks.

A commercial loan with an earnout can sometimes solve this problem.  An earnout on a commercial loan is an agreement by a commercial lender to advance more money upon the happening of a certain event, such as the completion of a renovation, the issuance of a certificate of occupancy ("CO"), the leasing of a certain amount of additional space, or the grant of a requested change in the zoning.

An earnout is NOT an agreement to refinance an existing commercial loan into a larger loan, with all of the attendant costs, such as new loan fees on the ENTIRE amount of the new loan, new attorney's fees, and new closing costs.

Instead, an earnout is an agreement to increase the amount of an existing commercial loan, without the need to record a new commercial mortgage.

At Blackburne & Sons we handle earnouts by using holdback agreements.  A holdback agreement is an agreement to hold back a portion of the loan amount pending the completion of some event.  For example, if a borrower needs a new roof, we might hold back $75,000 from the proceeds of the loan until the contractor has completed the new roof.  When the new roof has been laid, we release the $75,000 to the roofing contractor.

The advantage of this approach is that we make the new loan based on the assumption that the new roof will be installed.  The disadvantage of this approach is that the borrower has to pay points and interest on the extra $75,000 - even though he doesn't have access to the money until the new roof is completed.  In addition, the borrower has to pay the points and the interest on the extra $75,000 - even if the roof never gets replaced. 

Depositories - such as banks and mortgage funds - handle earnouts differently.  Let's suppose that Joe's strip center is unfortunately 40% vacant when his existing commercial first mortgage comes due.  To pay off his $1 million ballooning commercial loan, he obtains a $600,000 refinance from a different bank, along with an earnout provision for an additional $400,000 when Joe's strip center reaches 95% occupancy at the agreed rental rate.

In order to come up with entire $1 million to pay off his ballooning first mortgage, Joe borrows $600,000 from the bank and $400,000 from his parents.  Later, when the economy recovers, Joe successfully rents out all of the remaining space in his strip center.  He notifies the bank, and the bank increases their $600,000 balance to $1 million, charging Joe a one-point loan origination fee on just the additional $400,000 - NOT on the entire $1 million.  Joe then pays back his parents.

This latter method of handling earnouts is better for Joe because there was no guarantee that he would ever have been able to fully lease out his strip center.  Why pay points and interest on $1 million when the lender will only release $600,000?

Earnouts can save many commercial loans.  Don't forget about them!

Incoming commercial loan leads were outright crumby for Blackburne & Sons in January.  All of our commercial mortgage loan officers were complaining.  Therefore I just instructed my son, George IV, to double the number of commercial loan email newsletters that we send out daily.  (I should have done this two weeks earlier.  My bad.)

But that's the advantage of list marketing for commercial loans, as opposed to broadcast marketing (TV ads, radio ads) or display ads (magazine ads, newspaper ads, billboards, or Google ads).  When you need more incoming commercial loan business right now, you can use list marketing to instantly go out and get it.

Now I have been using a rather odd term, "list marketing."  Don't I just mean email newsletters?  No.  Sure, both C-Loans.com and Blackburne & Sons have regular email newsletters for commercial loans that go out to the thousands of clients we have developed over the past 33 years.  But the term, "marketing lists", also includes fax lists and snail mail lists.

Snail mail is relatively expensive, so if you use snail mail to market for commercial loans, be sure to only send mail pieces to a very limited number of recipients.  At Blackburne & Sons, I allow each loan officer to send snail mail out, at the company's expense, to just 300 of their best commercial loan brokers.  We call these their 300 Spartans.

Within list marketing, I do like email newsletters the best.  You should hire a computer graphics guru to design for you one time a template for your commercial loans email newsletters.  I use a wonderful guy named John Merry of NetPilot Web Solutions.  John is not terribly expensive, and I have been using him for 16 years.

Once your graphics guru has designed your newsletter template, its relatively easy to write a new email newsletter every week using an ordinary browser.  Then you simply send it out weekly using ConstantContact.com or iContact.com.  These newsletter services cost less than $100 per month, and they are a great value.

If you choose to market for commercial loans using a newsletter, here are some important tips:

1.  Don't be professional!  Nobody reads "professional" newsletters.  They are soooo boring.  Real people - including wealthy commercial real estate investors - read fun newsletters, the ones that are full of slang and juicy gossip.

2.  Always includes lots of Rat Goodies, like cute, clean jokes, funny pics, links to hilarious videos, movies reviews, and heart-warming stories about your children.

3.  Don't expect any results from your first five newsletters.  The Notches on the Belt Theory of Marketing tells us that customers do not buy until they have thought about buying on at least six, separate, independent occassions.  This is why good salesmen never accept the first few "No's."  Your email newsletters will not work until the recipients receive at least six newsletters.  After that your investor, mortgage broker, realtor, and banker clients will start to call in their commercial loan requests in response to your newsletters. 

But let's not miss the point of today's lesson:  If you market for commercial loans using lists, you can quickly get your phones ringing again by simply increasing the number of clients who receive your newsletter daily.

Man, oh man, do we ever have a great new apartment loan program for you!  There is a little-known institutional investor out there that has an almost insatiable appetite for apartment loans.  Last year they originated and/or purchased over $380 million in apartment permanent loans, making them one of the largest players in the multifamily financing market.

Because we have been in the commercial mortgage loan business for over 33 years, and because we own CommercialMortgage.com, Blackburne & Sons just got approved to originate and sell apartment loans to this investor.  These apartment loans actually close in our name, but they are quickly sold off to our institutional investor.  The vetting process took over six months to complete, but we are now one of only six mortgage banking firms in the entire country allowed to originate loans for this investor in our own name.

Okay, here's the deal.  These are all 30-year fully-amortized loans.  Your client has a choice of an ARM tied to 6-month LIBOR, a three-year hybrid, a five-year hybrid, a seven-year hybrid, or a ten-year hybrid.  By far the most popular choice is the five-year hybrid.

The interest rate is incredibly low, starting as low as 3.87% for a purchase money, 5-year hybrid in a Tier I market.  Properties in less-populated and/or less-desirable areas - known as Tier II and Tier III markets - have slightly higher interest rates.

The ARM program and the hybrid programs, after the initial fixed rate period, are tied to six-month LIBOR, with a 3.5% interest rate floor, a ceiling of 6% over the start rate.  On the hybrid loans, there is no periodic rate increase cap on the initial rate readjustment, immediately after the fixed rate period.  After the first rate readjustment, there is a 1% rate readjustment cap every six months.  This loan has no negative amortization.

This program can be used for apartment loans as small as $300,000 to as large as $20 million.  Apartment loans smaller than $1.5 million have slightly higher interest rates, but the interest rate is still very, very attractive. 

The loan-to-value ratio is between 75% and 60%, depending on the property's quality, age, and location, and whether the loan is a purchase-money loan, a rate-and-term refinance, or a cash-out refinance.  Your Blackburne & Sons loan officer can work with you to quickly make this determination.

In addition to apartments, this program can aslo be used for 4-star and 5-star mobile home parks (no single-wide coaches), mixed use properties (maximum of 40% commercial), student housing, and, surprisingly, low-income housing.  Caution:  Low-income housing deals are valued based on the lower rents typically found in nearby middle-income areas, so the maximum loan amount is often lower than expected.

Personal guarantees are required from Managing Members, General Partners, coporate officers, and individuals owning 20% or more of the property.

Loans to foreign nationals are available, up to 50% loan-to-value. 

We recommend that you quote your borrower the following:

Interest rate: 5.10%  (Assumes an average building in a Tier II market)

Loan Fee: 1 point  (Brokers add their fee on top)

Amortization / Term: 30/30

Prepayment Penalty: 5,4,3,2,1

Please gather for your Blackburne & Sons loan officer:

1. Color photo's of the property
2. Rent Roll
3. Last two years' actual income and expenses.
4. Financial statement on the borrower.