You should consider getting a commercial hard money loan only after you have reached the conclusion that you absolutely will not qualify for a conventional commercial real estate loan. The decision, although tough for most commercial funding recipients, is pretty easy. Either let go of your commercial real estate or accept the terms provided by your commercial hard money lender.
Commercial hard money lenders are essentially your last resort to finance commercial real estate. You are receiving one thing that’s extremely useful in exchange for the relatively high cost of a commercial hard money loan. That extremely useful thing is time. Time for repairs, time for restoration or whatever the difficulties that you’ve gotta surmount are. Whether it is taking your business back to profitability, reducing your debt, time to continue leasing out your commercial real estate, or to restore your own personal credit. We’ve seen so many borrowers end up letting their egos get in the way and turning this event into something it’s really not.
The truth is that, it’s basically an act of courage since you are actually facing the issues you confront head-on and dealing with everything at once, so you are eventually able to to resolve it. And no matter how bad it really is, you can take some pride in that. A whole lot of people today have a tendency to hide from reality and let their problems overwhelm them.
Remember the old saying: “comparing apples to apples”? You simply can’t compare commercial hard money loans to traditional bank financing, which you may have been eligible for 3 or so years ago. However, these days, you’ve really gotta be realistic and compare your intended financing to your existing alternatives. Here’s what your choices are: 1) Team up with a business partner. 2) Relinquish your entire business. 3) Lose your commercial real estate to foreclosure or other mishaps.
Let’s say you own a commercial property that’s worth $2,000,000 and you owe $500,000 on it. So, you’ve got $1,500,000 in equity that you could possibly lose versus paying for high-priced commercial hard money loan. Or say you take on an incompatible business partner who just because you’re pressed for time and need the money. Now, you have at risk whatever equity you’ve got in the property, and then you create further legal difficulties by needing to dissolve your business relationship with that business partner. And if things eventually work out with your business partner, you may even need to trade off a lot more with your business partner than you would otherwise spend in fees to the lender.
Most commercial hard money lenders charge you 6% on the front-end of loans, which is clearly pretty darned expensive. When you’re dealing with terms like that and you want an additional $500,000 to bring the total loan balance to $1,000,000. You’d have to pay $60,000 in fees–in comparison with losing $1,500,000. It is pretty difficult, yet straightforward. So, please don’t let your ego get in the way of your commercial real estate financing decisions. Just face your issues head on, and deal with them one by one.