Commercial Mortgage Loans – What Size Loan Can You Get?
Category : Commercial Loans
From a commercial mortgage professional who deal extensively in private (hard money) loans. One of the most frequent questions asked is “What loan amount can I get”? That’s not an easy question to answer because privately funded loans are much less standardized than conventional, institutionally funded loans so there are no hard-and-fast rules.
Private lenders don’t usually like raw land and rural land. Hard money people tend to think in terms of quick sale value, incase they (God forbid) have to take back the property. Un-entitled, vacant land is among the most difficult to sell quickly. In the event you find a lender willing to make you a deal land, do not expect to be offered more than, the lesser of, 50% of the purchase price or 50% of the collateral’s quick-sale value. If the land can’t be financed conventionally and you are looking for hard money, be prepared to put down a huge down-payment or have the seller carry-back a 2nd.
Properly zoned, fully entitled land that has all permits in place is a valuable commodity, Land, however, doesn’t produce income and therefore can’t cover its own mortgage payment the way a hotel or an office building can. That’s why, most hard money sources will only lend up to about 60% against land. Further, if a property owner can’t demonstrate the means to make the payment, lenders will insist that interest payments are held by a third party as an “interest reserve”. In this way lenders are protected. Any interest payments not made, due to early pay-off, will be returned to the borrower