Experience with Live Oak Bank?

May 22, 2024

by a searcher in Denver, CO, USA

Hi all, we're meeting with various SBA lenders now. Live Oak is obviously one of the best known, biggest out there. We've liked them so far - attended an 'Office Hours' session, and we were pretty quickly pre-qualified by submitting some paperwork to them. Does anyone have any really good reason why we shouldn't go with them? Any horror stories (or maybe just good reasons) why Live Oak might not be the best choice for a SBA 7(a) loan? Thanks for reading!

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Reply by a lender
in Stuart, FL, USA

Live Oak does a good job with the deals they will do. Their name is in the marketplace more than others, so more people know about them as they present themselves as one of the main self-search funder lenders. Truth is any SBA lender will do these deals if it's structured correctly. What most people don't understand is that the average national lender is going to close about 30 to 35% of the deals that walk in their door. It's not that there's not a deal there, it's just not a deal they're going to do. You have to take the right deal to the right lender to have a successful closing and if you don’t, you'll start to hear horror stories about SBA as a whole when in fact they probably aren't true. SBA is not one-size-fits-all for every lender. Every lender is nuanced and different and that can change with one credit committee meeting. If you don't have your finger on the pulse of what most lenders are doing, it's going to be a long ride. Nobody wants to say that, but that's the truth. You would be amazed at the number of deals my company does for national lenders. I know most of the reps well and they will call me and say “we can't get it done can you get it done somewhere else for us” and I always get it done. Self-search funder deals, or as I used to like to call them, investor deals are not any different than they were ten years ago, apart from colleges and other groups pushing them as a cottage industry. Also, some of the SBA rules have been relaxed, which makes it a little easier for everybody. These deals for SMB don't need to be that complicated and I see many posts where people are way over complicating things.

Reply by an intermediary
from Creighton University in Los Angeles, CA, USA

^redacted‌ Live Oak issues the most SBA loans by dollar amount for a reason. They are fantastic but take a minimum of 90 days to close. In our experience, we've found that shopping your deal around is most beneficial in terms of doing a "vibe check" on other banks, seeing which banks have the highest probability of closing the loan and offering the best interest rate. For context, we connect borrowers to SBA 7(a) lenders, so I'd be happy to chat. You can check out our website here: [https://godealwise.com/beacon]

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