Commercial real estate loans.

A commercial real estate loan is financing secured by property used for business purposes. Apartment communities, retail centers, office buildings, warehouses, hotels, mobile home parks, medical buildings, and the long tail of special-use property all sit inside that definition. What unites them is that the collateral is expected to produce income.

That single fact drives almost every difference between commercial and residential lending, and it is where most first-time borrowers get surprised.

The property is the borrower

On a home loan, the underwriting question is whether you can afford the payment. On a commercial loan, the first question is whether the building can. Lenders start with net operating income, compare it to the proposed debt service, and size the loan so the property carries itself with room to spare. Your credit, liquidity, and experience still matter, but you are the sponsor of the deal, not the source of repayment.

This is why two borrowers with identical financial statements get different answers on different buildings, and why a strong borrower cannot force a weak property into a good loan.

Shorter terms, and the balloon

Residential borrowers are used to a thirty-year fixed loan that fully pays off. Commercial debt rarely works that way. Terms are shorter than the amortization schedule, which means a balance is still outstanding when the term expires. That remaining balance is the balloon, and it has to be refinanced or paid off.

Nothing is wrong with this structure, but it changes how you plan. Commercial ownership involves periodic refinancing by design. Smart owners start looking at the next loan well before the current one matures, rather than discovering the deadline late. Our cash-out refinance page covers what happens when that refinance is also an opportunity to pull equity.

Recourse, non-recourse, and why lender type matters

Recourse debt means the guarantor stands behind the loan personally. Non-recourse debt limits the lender to the property itself, subject to standard carve-outs for fraud and similar bad acts. Neither is universally better. Non-recourse is attractive, but it typically comes from lender types with narrower property and market criteria, and the tradeoff often shows up in leverage or pricing.

The broader point is that the answer depends on who you ask. A bank, a life insurance company, a conduit lender, and a private fund will read the same deal through four different lenses. If you want the detail on that, our commercial lending page goes through each capital source and what it is actually good at.

The main purposes

Most commercial financing falls into a handful of categories. Purchase, for acquiring property. Refinance, for replacing existing debt or pulling out equity. Construction, for ground-up development. Rehab and bridge, for property that is being improved or is between stabilized states. And owner-occupied financing, for business owners buying the building they operate from, which has its own programs and its own rules. Our small business loans page covers that side.

Where a brokerage fits

You can go straight to your bank. Many people do, and sometimes that is the right outcome. What you do not get that way is a comparison.

We are an advisory and brokerage, not a lender. We do not fund anything. What we do is take your file to the sources most likely to write it, across more than 1,000 lender relationships nationwide, and then help you read the offers that come back against each other. That is the entire service. No credit pull, no cost to start.