What if your Church's loan request is decined?

 When a church receives a decline they are often given very little information as to why they did not qualify. They might hear something like: “Your debt service coverage was below our minimum requirement.” Or “The amount you are looking to borrow is more than your debt service can cover at a comfortable level.” To many people this sounds like garbled nonsense. What you don’t generally hear is what you need to do to be approved.

Ask specific questions about what the church can do to qualify for the loan. An analyst should be able to tell you how far the church is from being approved for the requested loan amount. You also want to know how much money the church can qualify for today. Some analysts are unwilling or unable to answer these questions because they do not know how to underwrite a church loan; they simply take your information and pass it off to an analyst that does the work.

Often times you will hear from an analyst that you simply need to increase your income by X to qualify for the loan. Increasing income can often times be more difficult than decreasing expenses. So it is better to express things in relative terms: “Your church needs to have about $50,000 to service the proposed new debt payment.” In this example, the church can decide if it wants to decrease expenses to make up the shortfall, increase income, or some combination of the two.

I will give you the kind of advice you need to understand exactly where your church is and what needs to be done to get the loan approved. My consultation is free and without obligation.

Even if your bank said no, we still want to look at your loan. Many times we can be more aggressive than a traditional bank and provide you a higher loan amount at better terms than they would have offered. 

So if you or someone you know is looking for a church loan, please contact me today. Don’t forget to ask about our referral program: