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This business financing strategy article will describe the importance of avoiding “problem commercial lenders”. The article will NOT name specific lenders to avoid, but key examples will be provided to illustrate why prudent commercial borrowers should be prepared to avoid a wide variety of existing commercial lenders in their search for viable business financing strategies.

I have been advising business owners for over 25 years, and I have encountered many business financing situations which have involved commercial lenders that I would not recommend as a result. These problematic situations have especially involved commercial mortgage loans, business cash advance situations and unsecured working capital loans. As a direct result of these experiences and daily conversations with other commercial loan professionals, I do in fact believe that there are a number of commercial lenders that should be avoided. This conclusion is typically based on more than one negative experience or an obvious pattern of lending abuses.

I have published many commercial loan articles which are designed to assist commercial borrowers in avoiding business loan problems. One of the most serious business financing situations is a commercial lender that causes business loan problems for their commercial borrowers on a recurring basis. It is particularly this type of commercial lender which prudent commercial borrowers should be prepared to avoid unless viable alternative business financing options do not realistically exist.

Here are a few examples of why certain commercial lenders should be avoided.

BUSINESS FINANCING STRATEGIES AND COMMERCIAL LENDERS TO AVOID EXAMPLE NUMBER 1 – Yes or No?

I have published an article which discusses the tendency of many banks to say “YES” when they mean “NO”. Such banks will typically attach onerous business financing conditions to commercial loans instead of simply declining the loan. Business owners should explore other commercial loan alternatives before accepting business financing terms that put them at a competitive disadvantage.

BUSINESS FINANCING STRATEGIES AND COMMERCIAL LENDERS TO AVOID EXAMPLE NUMBER 2 – The Commercial Appraisal Process

For commercial real estate loans, commercial appraisals are an unavoidable part of the commercial loan underwriting process. The commercial appraisal process is lengthy and expensive, so avoiding commercial lenders which have displayed a pattern of problems and abuses in this area will benefit the commercial borrower by saving them both time and money.

BUSINESS FINANCING STRATEGIES AND COMMERCIAL LENDERS TO AVOID EXAMPLE NUMBER 3 – Think Outside the Bank

In smaller metropolitan markets, it is not unusual for a dominant commercial lender to impose harsher commercial loan terms than would typically be seen in a more competitive commercial financing market. Such commercial lenders routinely take advantage of a relative lack of other commercial lenders in their local market. An appropriate response by commercial borrowers is to seek out non-bank business financing options. It is neither necessary nor wise for commercial borrowers to depend only upon local traditional banks for working capital and business cash advance solutions. For most business financing situations, a non-local and non-bank commercial lender is likely to provide improved commercial financing terms because they are accustomed to competing aggressively with other commercial lenders.

BUSINESS FINANCING STRATEGIES AND COMMERCIAL LENDERS TO AVOID EXAMPLE NUMBER 4 – Meaningless Pre-approvals

Commercial borrowers frequently want a commercial lender to approve their commercial loan at the earliest possible point. The assumed benefit to this early business loan approval is that it will enable the commercial borrower to make other business plans which depend on the business financing being finalized.

Because an ethical commercial lender will treat any form of an approval very seriously, commercial borrowers should expect that a meaningful version of such an approval will not be realistically possible in just two or three days. Nevertheless there are commercial lenders who provide their own special version of a pre-approval within just a few days of receiving preliminary application information. Because this abbreviated approach to pre-approvals almost always produces unexpected surprises for the commercial borrower as the business financing process goes forward, commercial borrowers need to be extremely wary of any commercial lenders that take this approach.

Why do some commercial lenders provide such meaningless pre-approvals? There are two likely reasons. (1) To motivate the commercial borrower to stop considering other potential commercial lenders. (2) To provide a pre-approval that is similar to a structure prevalent with residential mortgage loans. Since many business loans are arranged by residential mortgage brokers who are frequently unfamiliar with common business financing procedures, this reason will be especially applicable when dealing with commercial lenders that specialize in dealing with residential mortgage brokers.

Copyright 2005-2007 AEX Commercial Financing Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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Despite efforts by the federal government and commercial lenders to suggest that there is ample business funding, confusion seems to be increasing about small business loans and working capital loans. As a result, the actual availability of basic business finance services such as commercial real estate financing and business cash advance programs is not clear to many commercial borrowers.

It seems apparent that there have been many reports suggesting that normal commercial finance channels are either frozen or extremely sluggish. After reviewing other funding sources, it is possible to find more commercial loan financing options than such reports might suggest. Uncertainties in credit and financial markets have produced misleading and often conflicting information about commercial financing availability. For most business owners, it is probably not clear if business finance funding is realistically available to them or not.

In spite of some admittedly bad news, there continue to be to reliable funding sources for commercial real estate loans, working capital loans and especially for business cash advances. At the same time, the current negative economic conditions will prove to be difficult for most businesses. Commercial borrowers should expect that extra efforts will be required to successfully arrange commercial financing. An especially harsh reality for business financing is that many banks have discontinued all or most of their business lending activities, often with very little advance notice.

To use an example, commercial finance reports might not accurately reflect that some specialized kinds of commercial financing have been disproportionately disrupted. Commercial borrowers might be unnecessarily confused by reports that do not refer to all commercial loan situations but rather primarily apply to a very specialized form of business financing. To illustrate with a key example, commercial construction loans are currently in short supply by most accounts. Such specialized business loans are not as easily available as they were just a few months ago, and a more accurate accounting would reflect that the number of commercial lenders currently active in construction financing has shrunk dramatically. At the same time, most commercial real estate loans without new construction have not been as severely impacted as funding requests which do involve construction financing.

Several publications have reported that most new business financing requests are on hold or have simply been rejected due to recent financial market uncertainties, and this is another example of how business finance funding reports might confuse small business owners. While the sources for this information might have been honestly told by one or more lending institutions that they are in fact deferring new commercial loan funding, this does not mean that is the case for the entire country. If the discussion involved automobile sales, it would be comparable to concluding that nobody is selling cars anywhere after learning that several major dealers and two manufacturers announced that they were going out of business due to lack of adequate sales. Just because one or more banks fail or stop making business loans, it does not mean that there are not commercial loans available from other sources.

Because the banking industry has been involved in financial disruptions of epic proportions, commercial borrowers should maintain a cautious perspective in determining how to obtain and refinance small business loans. Many banks are sounding and acting like they have been through the equivalent of a train wreck. In such a natural disaster, it might not be prudent for business owners to seek the advice of banks which effectively caused the train to derail in the first place.

Despite reports about limited availability of business financing, some commercial lending activities such as business cash advance programs are actually as active as they have ever been. In the current commercial funding crisis, small business owners should seek a commercial loans expert for a realistic assessment and candid discussion about working capital loans and business finance programs.

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