To learn more about business banking, Elaine Leap of JP Morgan Chase Bank returned to the Champions DFW Commercial Real Estate Radio Show and Podcast. She joined co-hosts Jim Kelley and Ron Taylor to share her insight in a time that the commercial real estate industry is booming in the Dallas / Fort Worth area.
Here is an excerpt from their conversation, and be sure to listen to the free podcast download for the complete conversation on business banking:
Elaine Leap of Chase Bank: About five years ago, I landed at Chase and focused in our business banking division for about five years now. I’ve really tried to focus the last 10 years of my banking career on the small to medium-sized business client. So what we try to do is really come in as a trusted advisor and part of their professional team, which kind of leads me into my first do and don’t of applying for a commercial real estate loan, pick your professional team.
I have worked with Jim and his group over at Champions for many years now and it is so important to have the key people in place when you start this process of looking or acquiring commercial property. It’s just really important to have honest people that know the market and that can get you that integral information that you need. So I’m just humbled and honored to be able to work with your group.
Jim Kelley of Champions DFW: It’s so very important, Ron, and we’ve talked about how critical it is to have strong vendor partners that come alongside and have the same values and the holistic approach to, how do we serve the client and work together? We team up to serve the client. And Elaine without question does many, many transactions for the Champions team because she’s reliable. She interacts with the clients. She goes above and beyond. She gets deals done.
Out of the many years I’ve worked with her, there might have been only a couple deals that we didn’t get across the finish line because she is so strong. Chase is so strong in deploying their services in terms of getting loans for owner-users, investors, etc., developers. So Elaine, I salute you. You guys do a great job.
Let’s jump into some of those do’s and don’ts that you mentioned. A lot of our listeners are owner-user types that may be seeking to purchase commercial properties for their own business, etc. Share with us some do’s and don’ts when applying for a commercial loan, be it Chase or anyone else.
Elaine: I’d be happy to. So like that first one I said, is get your professional team together. It’s really important because you’re going to be providing financials to the bank so you need to get your CPA involved or your accounting team. You need to get a really strong, good commercial realtor. You need to get your lender, your banker in place. Possibly also your legal team. There might be some issues around that that need to be come up before you start the process. Putting your professional team together will save you a lot of heartache down the road.
The number two thing I always recommend is getting your financial package ready. It’s real important. You’re telling a story to the bank and to the underwriting team and you want that story to be very clear and really well put-together. So you need three years minimum of tax returns for your business. You also need three years of your personal returns. And that would be for anybody that’s going to guarantee the loans. If you have a business partner or you have somebody else that’s going to come in, we need their personal tax returns as well.
You’re also going to need financial statements for your company. Three years is ideal, but we’ll definitely take what you have. If you haven’t been in business three years, not a big deal. We’ll work with what have and we’ll go from there. It’s no problem. Then we really want a nice, in-depth personal financial statement. If you don’t have one of those prepared each year…like a lot of people, they only really kind of put it together when they need to…the SBA website has a really good example. We also have one on Chase.com.
Learn more about business banking in this podcast. Enjoy the free download here or on iTunes.
Learn more about Jim Kelley, here.
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