Commercial Real Estate Investing From A-Z Commercial Loans: What is Debt Service Coverage Ratio, What Counts as Assets, What Are Deal Killers
As we continue our conversation around commercial financing, will learn: how you can get a commercial loan as a first time buyer and operator, what is debt service coverage ratio, what counts as assets when you are getting a loan, what are deal killers when getting a commercial loan, and what are some things that you should keep in mind about your loans in case our economy takes a turn. We are interviewing Blake Janover, the founder and CEO of Janover Ventures, a commercial real estate and multifamily capital markets advisor focused on providing senior debt for commercial real estate.
You can read this interview here: https://montecarlorei.com/commercial-loans-debt-service-ratio/
Can first time buyers and operators get a loan? Do they need to have a job, does the credit score matter as much as residential, what's the minimum down payment?
The answer is yes. It's considered a credit factor, a risk factor, when an underwriter that analyzes credit looks at a deal and says "This is your first piece of commercial real estate" this is higher risk, but there are ways to mitigate it. One way to mitigate the risk is to add a partner that's highly experienced, I think it's great advice. It's not just great advice because it's what the lender wants, but generally speaking there's a reason the lender wants it, and it's imprudent to enter into a new industry without experience and not think that there are a lot of things that could go wrong that you don't know about and that's what having an experienced partner is about.
In some cases you can offset experience with having an experienced third party property manager that has a demonstrated track record of managing similar properties in a similar sub market, and lenders will look at other things in order to offset certain risks such as a larger down payment, for example.
What is debt service coverage ratio?
From a net worth and liquidity perspective, lenders generally want to see that you have a net worth greater than the loan amount. That's all your assets minus all your liabilities. So if you're borrowing a million dollars, they want to see that you have a better than a million dollar cumulative net worth among all the guarantors or carve guarantors. And this isn't a hard and fast number. Liquidity is generally 10% but I'll talk about a deal a little later where we went way below that. So these are not hard metrics. Debt service coverage ratio is a hard metric. A good example is if your monthly debt payments to your lender are $10,000 a month, your lender will want to see that you have net operating income no less than $12,000 a month. That 12,000 representing 1.2 multiple of the 10,000 debt payments.
What are some typical deal killers for loan applications?
One of our biggest deal killers prior to an application is unrealistic expectations. We get inquiries that are not based in reality: "I'm buying a property for $5 million, I want to borrow $6 million". Okay, me too, let me know when you find that loan. Sometimes folks are looking for equity and we're really focused on senior debt. A big pre-application and post application deal killer is nondisclosure, principals that are not telling us all of their dirty little secrets and then it comes out later and it hurts everybody. I'm a big believer in just tell us everything upfront and we will either figure out a way to make it work or put a bullet in it early, but everything comes out in the wash. Other deal killers are net worth, liquidity, experience.
Blake Janover
capital@janover.ventures
(800) 567-9631
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