Commercial Loan Review – Why It Is Essential

February 23rd, 2010 by author Leave a reply »

Commercial Loan Modification

Owners of commercial properties, such as warehouses, apartment complexes, strip malls, shopping centers and retail shops, can take advantage of commercial loan modifications if they find that their cash flow is not sufficient for the monthly payments.  However, one of the prerequisites for such modifications is a commercial loan review.  The two parties have different purposes for a review so that a loan workout could be reached that would be a win-win situation for both lender and borrower.  For the borrower, this review is required to analyze the various details of the original loan contract to discover any violations made by the lender against certain regulations.  On the other hand, the lender will require a commercial loan review to assess the capability of the borrower to repay the loan after a loan restructuring.

The lender usually conducts a commercial loan review first before permitting the negotiations for the restructuring of the debt to start because this will show if the individual or business can really afford the monthly payments after they have been reduced.  The review will also look into various information regarding the borrower, such as the cash flow of the business, the payment history, and the presence of potential guarantors.  This review is one of the factors that the lender will consider when deciding whether to approve the loan workout or not.  Basically, what this means is that there is no sense in wasting time negotiating and then approving the adjustments if the borrower does not have the capacity to keep up with the payments.

Meanwhile, a commercial loan review has a vital and different purpose for the borrower.  Usually, loss mitigation professionals and experts are hired by the property owner to scrutinize the original loan agreement to check if there are any indications that some laws and regulations had been violated.  It has been the observation of many that during the years when commercial loans were being provided in large numbers, many lenders had cut corners and in the process had violated certain laws and regulations that are supposed to prevent lender abuse.  If such violations are found in the contracts, the banks would not be able to implement any of the provisions that are contained therein, including foreclosure.  Thus, this is a vital negotiating tool for the borrower that could facilitate the approval of the application.

A commercial loan review may also be helpful when foreclosure proceedings have already been started.  If the previous agreement contains such violations, the court may put the foreclosure process on hold until such time that a judgment has been rendered on the claims of the borrower.  The property owner is not even required to continue with the monthly installments although it would be prudent to keep these payments in a certain account, just in case the ruling of the judge is for the lender.

Thus, a commercial loan review is essential for both lender and borrower although they have different purposes.  For the lender, it is used to assess the borrower’s creditworthiness, but for the borrower, it is utilized to find violations in the previous loan agreement.

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