Commercial Loan Programs

Q Commercial Capital is the commercial financing division of Q Mortgage LLC. We are a brokerage. We take your scenario, underwrite it the way a lender will, and place it with wholesale lenders whose programs actually fit the transaction. We do not fund loans with our own capital, which means we have no product to defend and no reason to push a deal into a structure that does not suit it.

This page covers the three program categories we work in and the loan purposes that run across all of them. Read it as a map of how commercial financing is organized, not as a rate sheet. Terms, structures, eligibility, and pricing vary by lender, property, borrower, and transaction, and nothing on this page is an offer or a commitment to lend.

A common opening question is "what programs do you have?" That is the wrong end of the problem. Program selection is an output, not an input. Six answers determine almost everything about where a commercial file lands:

Once those six answers exist, the program usually names itself. As a hypothetical illustration: a stabilized twelve-unit apartment building at $1.4 million with a clean rent roll is a small balance commercial file, while that same hypothetical building at sixty percent occupancy in the middle of a unit turn is a bridge conversation with a permanent takeout planned on the back end. In a hypothetical owner-user case, a contractor buying a shop building for his own crews is an owner-occupied conversation, which may run conventional or may run through an SBA-guaranteed program depending on the down payment, the business financials, and the occupancy percentage.

This is why we ask for the deal before we talk about structure. A program recommendation made before anyone has seen the rent roll is a guess wearing a suit.

Small balance commercial is the category covering loan amounts from $250,000 to $5 million. We place small balance commercial financing from $250,000 to $5 million for purchase, rate-and-term refinance, and cash-out refinance, on both investor-owned and owner-user properties. Adjustable-rate structures and interest-only periods are available depending on the lender and the file.

Underwriting here is property-first. Two numbers carry most of the weight. Net operating income, or NOI, is the property's gross income minus its operating expenses, calculated before the mortgage payment. Debt service coverage ratio, or DSCR, is that NOI divided by the annual debt payment — as an arithmetic illustration only, a DSCR of 1.25 means the property produces $1.25 of income for every $1.00 of debt service; required coverage is set by the lender and varies by file. Loan-to-value, or LTV, compares the loan amount to the appraised value. Lenders set minimums on coverage and maximums on leverage, and the binding constraint is frequently coverage rather than value.

Expect to produce a rent roll, a T-12 (the trailing twelve months of operating statements), copies of leases, entity formation documents, a personal financial statement, and credit authorization. Terms vary by lender, property, borrower, and transaction.

Above $5 million the file changes character. High balance commercial financing is oriented toward stabilized commercial assets, and fixed-term structures are available. The property still has to carry the debt, but the diligence widens considerably and the timeline stretches to accommodate it.

At this size lenders typically order a full narrative appraisal, a Phase I environmental site assessment, and a property condition report. They read leases rather than skim a rent roll, and tenant credit quality becomes a real underwriting factor — to illustrate hypothetically, a single-tenant building leased to a national credit tenant with fifteen years of remaining term underwrites very differently from that same hypothetical building with three local tenants on rolling two-year leases. Sponsor experience matters: lenders want to see that the borrower or the borrower's principals have operated assets of this type and size before. Capital reserve requirements, cash management provisions, and recourse structure are all lender-specific, and we tell you exactly what a given quote requires before you spend money on third-party reports.

Terms vary by lender, property, borrower, and transaction. Larger transactions are also more sensitive to timing — third-party reports have their own turnaround, and no honest broker will promise you a closing date before the reports are ordered.

Business purpose lending covers residential one-to-four-unit property held as an investment rather than occupied as a home. Because the loan is made for a business purpose to an investor — frequently an LLC or other entity — it generally falls outside TRID, the federal consumer disclosure framework that governs owner-occupied residential mortgages. That changes the paperwork and the timeline, not the standard.

DSCR qualification is available on these files, which means the property's rental income is measured against the proposed debt payment instead of the underwriting resting on the borrower's personal income documents. That is the only thing DSCR qualification removes. Lenders still verify credit, still require reserves and a documented source of down payment funds, still require an appraisal and often a rent schedule, still require entity formation documents and an operating agreement when the borrower is an LLC, and still require clean title, hazard insurance, and lender's title insurance. There is no such thing as a file with no underwriting, and any broker telling you otherwise is describing something that does not exist.

Business purpose lending is a natural fit for investors buying single-family rentals through an entity, for small portfolio owners, and for residential agents whose clients have crossed from primary-residence buying into investing. Terms vary by lender, property, borrower, and transaction.

Purchase. Acquisition financing for an income-producing or owner-occupied commercial property. The lender underwrites the asset you are buying, the price against the appraisal, your down payment and its documented source, and your capacity to operate the asset. Getting a purchase file organized before you go under contract is worth doing early, because contract timelines rarely leave room to assemble documents from scratch.

Rate-and-term refinance. Replacing existing debt with new debt without taking meaningful cash out. Common drivers are a maturing balloon, an expiring interest-only period, a prepayment window opening, or a desire to move from adjustable to fixed. The underwriting question is whether the property's current NOI supports the new payment at the lender's required coverage — which is a different question from whether it supported the old one.

Cash-out refinance. Pulling accumulated equity out of a property you already own, typically to acquire the next asset, fund capital improvements, retire higher-cost debt, or recapitalize a partnership. Lenders commonly scrutinize cash-out more closely than rate-and-term, often asking about the use of proceeds and applying tighter leverage limits and seasoning requirements on both ownership and any recent value increase. If the value jump came from a renovation, be ready to document what you spent and what it produced in rent. Terms vary by lender, property, borrower, and transaction.

Bridge financing. Short-term debt for a property that does not yet qualify for permanent financing — a vacant or partially leased building, an asset mid-renovation, a property with a lease-up story, or a purchase that needs to close before a permanent lender can complete its process. Bridge lending is priced and structured for the risk it carries, and it only makes sense when the exit is concrete: a signed lease pipeline, a renovation budget with a timeline, or an executed sale contract. Before we place bridge debt we want to see the takeout plan in writing.

Construction-to-permanent. A structure that funds the build through draws and then converts to permanent financing on completion, rather than requiring a second closing and a second set of costs. These files require a general contractor with relevant experience, a detailed budget and draw schedule, plans and permits, and usually a larger equity contribution than a stabilized-asset loan. Lender appetite for ground-up construction varies substantially and moves with market conditions.

SBA 7(a) and SBA 504. These are loan programs of the U.S. Small Business Administration, delivered through participating lenders and Certified Development Companies. The SBA guarantees a portion of the loan, which changes the lender's risk profile and can allow structures a conventional loan will not support — commonly lower down payments and longer amortization for qualifying owner-occupied real estate and business acquisitions. The 7(a) program is broader and more flexible in its permitted uses; the 504 program is built specifically around owner-occupied real estate and long-lived equipment, and pairs a conventional first lien with a CDC-held second. Both programs require the business to occupy a qualifying percentage of the property and both carry eligibility rules, fees, and documentation requirements set by the SBA rather than by any broker or lender.

To be precise about this: the SBA does not lend directly to borrowers in these programs, does not endorse brokers or lenders, and has no affiliation with Q Commercial Capital or Q Mortgage LLC. We help you assemble and place an SBA-eligible file with participating lenders. Eligibility is determined by the lender and the SBA, not by us.

Owner-occupied. Financing for a property your operating business occupies rather than leases to third parties. Underwriting looks at the business as well as the building: tax returns, interim financial statements, debt schedule, and the global cash flow of business and guarantor together. Owner-occupied deals can run conventional or SBA-guaranteed, and the right answer usually turns on how much cash you want to keep in the business versus put into the building. Terms vary by lender, property, borrower, and transaction.

You do not need a complete file to start a conversation, and you should not wait until you have one. Send what you have and we will tell you what is missing.

For an income property, the fastest path to a real answer is the address, the purchase price or your estimate of value, the loan amount you are after, the current rent roll, and the trailing twelve months of operating statements. For an owner-occupied request, send the property details plus two years of business tax returns and a current debt schedule. For a business purpose 1-4 unit file, send the address, the purchase price or payoff, and the current or market rent.

We will come back with the structures that fit, what each one will require from you, and where the file is likely to run into friction. If a transaction does not work, we say so early rather than letting you find out late in the process.