Whether you have placed fifty commercial files or none, the question is the same: when a hard one lands, who structures it with you.
Written by A.I.M.I. Collective Mortgage Group, Brokerage editorial team
Published September 2026 · Last reviewed 11 September 2026
Commercial is the niche most residential brokers want and fewest attempt, because the first three files alone are usually three declines. Here it is a track with a dedicated underwriter, its own lender forum and a four guide playbook. This page answers the questions a commercial specialist asks before moving, in the order they ask them.
Self employed clients, professionals and investors already ask commercial questions. The niche starts by saying yes to them.
Credit analysis and structuring transfer directly. Read the commercial banking bridge.
Reading a rent roll against an operating statement, debt service coverage, patience with ninety day timelines, and the fee conversation. Learnable on files with a desk beside you.
Analysis over volume, comfort with lumpy income, and the discipline to tell a client a file will not fund before it wastes their deposit.
A business buying its premises. Often the first commercial file a residential broker keeps.
A fiveplex to a twelve plex, conventional or insured. Read multifamily on the Deal Desk.
A store with apartments above, a strip plaza, a restaurant building. Vacancy and lease terms decide the loan.
Warehouses, self storage, hospitality, care homes. Lender appetite is narrower and the desk knows who wants each.
Every self employed client, investor and professional hears that you now do commercial, twice.
One accountant, one business lawyer, one commercial realtor, served with fast honest answers on whether a file is financeable.
Commercial lenders present appetite weekly; the Commercial Matchmaking Forum puts them in the room. Read lender access.
Understand one property type properly before the second. Files compound inside an asset class.
Nine capabilities from lender access to co brokering. Read the Deal Desk.
Paths for brokers new to commercial and established commercial brokers.
The DSCR check and the commercial income property checklist.
Profiles of the commercial brokers here are being added. Ask on a discovery call who you would be working alongside.
Bring it to the Deal Desk for structuring and lender placement, and learn on the deal without losing it.
Submit through the portal, the underwriter structures and places the file with you, you stay broker of record and split on that file. Categories: commercial, multi family, mixed use, construction, land, agriculture. Live files reviewed within 24 hours.
The commercial track of The Broker Collective in Surrey. Commercial lenders at the table, brokers across from them. The March 2026 edition is on the events page.
A team chat where a DSCR question or a lender appetite question gets an answer from someone who placed one last month, and a founding team with commercial files in its own book.
Banks and life companies for stabilised multi family and quality mixed use. Credit unions for owner occupied, small multi family and local deals. CMHC insured lenders for leverage and long amortisation on multi family. Alternative and private commercial lenders for construction, land, transitional property and anything with a story. Lender panels change, so we talk names on the call rather than print them.
The DSCR check, the six deal types with typical ratios, how the fees work, and the first file checklist.
Accountants with incorporated clients, commercial realtors, builders and developers, business lawyers. The referral playbook covers each.
Weekly lender training, the lending updates, and the forum twice a year. Commercial expands naturally into construction and investor multi family, and it is the niche that pays best per file: read why commercial scales a book.
We do not hand out niche leads, and broker profile pages on this site are not built yet. What is true today: the guides on this site are the organic engine, a broker who writes for it gets the byline, the Deal Desk works your hard files with you, and the forums put you in the room with the lenders. Ask on the call and we will tell you exactly which of those applies to your niche this quarter.
Every niche here has a lender panel, an underwriter who has placed those files and brokers who already own the market. We publish lender types rather than lender names, because panels change and we would rather be right in a year than specific today. Pick the niche where you already have three funded files and a referral source, then build the knowledge around it.
For brokers building a B and private lending niche: the private lending forum, the Deal Desk, lender types we place with, disclosure and tools.
For brokers building a construction niche: draw mortgages, builder files, land to build, the Deal Desk construction category and lender types.
For brokers building an investor niche: rental offsets, portfolio schedules, the fifth unit that turns commercial, lender types we place with and tools.
For brokers building a self employed niche: reading NOAs, add backs, bank statement programs, lender types we place with and accountant referrals.
Book a discovery call. Bring the file, or bring the plan, and we will show you how it runs here.