What are the best non SBA financing options have you found where you can still do 10% down?

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July 02, 2025

by a searcher from Brigham Young University in Idaho Falls, ID, USA

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Reply by a lender
from Eastern Illinois University in 900 E Diehl Rd, Naperville, IL 60563, USA
I concur with some of the comments already made. If you only have 10% to put down, really the only option you have is SBA financing. Most of the rest of the market is lending 50% to 65% loan-to-cost as a more general rule and typically the senior debt is not going to be more than 2 to 3x multiple of adjusted EBITDA. Some SBIC will get you higher leverage than that, but outside of that your more conventional leverage is much lower. Many lenders will allow you to use seller equity roll-over and seller notes as part of your equity, but we are still generally seeing those lenders want at least 10% to 20% in fresh buyer / investor equity into the transaction. Of course this response is not going to cover everyone as there are a lot of lending programs out there, but short of finding a unicorn, it is going to cover most. If you have additional questions about non-SBA financing, you can reach me here or directly at redacted
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Reply by a searcher
in New York, NY, USA
The few options I see are (1) if you are able to negotiate very large seller note and pair that with non-SBA debt sources to help bridge the 60% loan to cost bogey Brad mentioned above; (2) if real estate or plant makes up a large portion of the purchase price, some acquisitions can be financed through a sale-leaseback transaction where they will look to asset value and not equity (although finding a deal that pencils down to 10% will be difficult and probably involve an operating company that doesn't generate a ton of EBITDA vs the property value); and (3) if the seller is willing to finance the entire deal. Commercial debt that is non-SBA will be hard to pull off with limited cash down; you will curtail your investment universe pretty significantly, so you should ask yourself why you are resisting SBA (it's probably the guarantee) and if the opportunity cost of that hesitation is worth it. Only you will be able to answer that.
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