If One Commercial Loan Officer Turns You Down, Just Call Another One at the Very Same Bank
Need to place a commercial mortgage loan right now? You can submit your commercial loan in 750 different commercial lenders in just four minutes using C-Loans.com. And C-Loans.com is free!
Placing a commercial mortgage loan with a bank is more of an art than a science. Below you will find some placement tips that may help you to close your commercial loan:
- Before you send a commercial loan package to a lender, it is customary to call the commercial loan officer first to run the deal by him.
- Hugely important tip: Whenever you call a loan officer to run a deal by him, make sure you first ask him, "Hey, John, this is George Blackburne at C-Loans, and I'd like to run a deal by you. Did I catch you at a bad time? I'll be happy to call back later if you're swamped right now." Brokers and borrowers who fail to do this will find that the loan officer will only listen long enough to find the first excuse to turn the deal down - just because he's harried at the moment and doesn't want to be bothered.
- When you do send a package, don't send some great, big, thick package that will take the loan officer five hours to review. Instead, just send a two or three page Executive Loan Summary. Most commercial mortgage loan documents are now delivered by email, instead of by snail mail or Federal Express.
- Make sure your Executive Loan Summary includes at least one photograph of the property.
- When a commercial loan officer receives a PDF by email, in the back of his mind he is worried that the PDF might contain 400 pages of documentation. As a result, he will tend to put off reviewing it.
- I therefore like to include in the body of the short email words like the following: "John, attached is a short Executive Loan Summary on the deal we discussed the other day. It's just three pages long, and there's a nice color photograph of the property. It's really nice!"
- It is customary in commercial mortgage finance to call the lender a few hours later and say, "Hey, John, this is George over at C-Loans. I am just calling to make sure you received the Executive Loan Summary on that deal we discussed the other day. I know you haven't had time to review it yet. I just need to verify that you received it."
- Now in reality, what you're really doing when you make the above call is to gently kick the commercial loan officer in the booty to read the package. He's not lazy. He's just a veteran who knows that many commercial mortgage brokers will ship out a loan package to 30 different lenders. It's called shotgunning. Your kick-in-the booty call is a welcome message to the commercial loan officer that this deal is alive and waiting just for him, if he likes it.
- Every commercial mortgage deal ever originated has a few black hairs (flaws). There is no such thing as a perfect commercial mortgage deal. Therefore, if you are going to close a commercial mortgage loan, you need to find a commercial loan officer who both likes you and is willing to fight for your loan in Loan Committee.
- If the first commercial loan officer that you call at Bank of America, for example, just brushes you off (turns you down without seriously considering the deal, just to get rid of you), don't give up! Just call a different commercial loan officer at Bank of America and try to sell him on the deal. Over the years I have closed numerous commercial loans this way.
- Not all commercial mortgage loan officers are the same. Some will fight hard in Loan Committee to sell your deal, and others are as wimpy in Loan Committee as a spaghetti noodle. Based on a lifetime of experience in commercial real estate finance, here is my pecking order of commercial loan officers, from best to worst: Asian women (absolutely the best!), women on commission, men on commission, men on salary, and women on salary (very often too scared of losing their jobs to fight for you).
- If your deal gets turned over to commercial loan officer that you can tell is an absolute wimp, pull the deal! Don't let the wimp work on it. The wimp will simply look for the first black hair and then turn you down. And since every commercial mortgage deal has a black hair, all you are doing is fouling the water at that bank. Why not pull the package back and resubmit it to a different loan officer ten days later?
- My final tip is to learn to use Box.net (free data storage) to send your loan packages. This way the banker can just pull down the supporting loan documents (tax returns, financial statements, etc.) as he needs them.
Need to place a commercial mortgage loan right now? You can submit your commercial loan in 750 different commercial lenders in just four minutes using C-Loans.com. And C-Loans.com is free!