Any brokerage can hand you a list of commercial lenders. Access means knowing which one wants this file, this month, at this leverage, and having a person there who picks up when the desk calls.
Commercial lending runs on appetite. The same lender that funded a mixed use building at 65 percent in March may be full on retail by June and hungry for industrial by September. A residential broker learns lender policy once and applies it for a year. A commercial broker has to know where the money wants to go right now. That knowledge is the first thing the desk carries for you.
Conventional commercial mortgages on stabilised income property and owner occupied buildings. Best pricing, slowest committees, the most documents. The desk knows which branch teams actually want broker business.
Longer terms and larger loans on quality assets. Life companies in particular for multifamily and industrial with strong covenants.
Insured multifamily, purpose built rental and the programmes that make a five percent rate difference on a building. A separate conversation, and the desk has had it.
Bridge, transitional, construction and higher leverage. Faster answers, higher cost, and disclosure rules the desk keeps you on the right side of. Read how MICs work.
For the file that needs a person, not a committee. Used carefully, documented properly, and never as the first call when a bank would say yes.
Three things. First, the desk knows current appetite because it places files every week, so your file goes to the lender most likely to say yes first instead of being shopped to six. Second, the desk has relationships with people, not portals: a business development manager who will look at a summary before the full package, an underwriter who will explain a decline. Third, the collective's volume earns status that a single broker rarely reaches alone, which shows up as turnaround and in the willingness to look at the file with a story.
Weekly lender training sessions where commercial lenders present what they want. The Commercial Matchmaking Forum at the Broker Collective events, where brokers and lenders meet in one room. And the desk itself, which introduces you to the lender on your file so the second one comes to you directly.
A broker brings a $2.4 million purchase of a six unit strip retail building, 70 percent occupied. Two banks decline on vacancy without reading further. The desk knows a credit union that will underwrite on in place income with a leasing holdback, and a MIC that will bridge for twelve months while the two units are leased. The client sees both options with the cost of each. That is access.
Part of the Commercial Deal Desk. Next: deal structuring.
Book a discovery call with a live or hypothetical commercial scenario and the desk will tell you which lender types would want it and why.