January 31, 2007

Large Land Loans

The Sponsor Needs an Immediate Exit Strategy

According to David Repka of Bison Financial Group, a pretty smart old veteran of the commercial real estate finance game, the only large land loans that are getting made these days are those with an immediate exit strategy. The big banks - the lenders most suited to fund large land loans - will not make loans to land speculators with no immediate plans to develop the property.

The lenders making the most land loans these days are national banks, regional banks, community banks and private (hard money) lenders.

Land lenders today are also going to look at -

Land use
Zoning
Status of entitlements
Historic cost of the land
How much "skin" the sponsor has in the deal
Pre-sales/pre-leasing

If the land is used and zoned agricultural, if it lacks a tentative map, and the land is located in the Northeast section of the country, the deal is very unlikely to get done, especially if the sponsor only has 20% of the land cost into the deal and is claiming tremendous appreciation due merely to "the market".

On the other hand, the purchase of entitled land in a warm climate, where an experienced sponsor is contributing a 30% downpayment in cash, just might get financed. Private money lenders will even finance large value-added land loans where the sponsor has successfully assembled neighboring parcels and/or gotten the property rezoned.

You can apply to scores of large land lenders using C-Loans.com.