Secured Business Loans
A secured business loan is long-term capital for your business, secured by eligible real estate you already own or are buying. There is no minimum time in business, no revenue requirement, and no industry restriction, because the real estate carries the funding rather than your financials. GreenBridge lends from $75,000 to $10,000,000 in 31 states.
No credit check for your quote
Credit Score
No Minimum
Term
30 Years
Loan Amount
$75,000 to $10,000,000
Where We Lend
31 States
Leverage
Up to 75% LTV
Timing
10 to 15 business days
Business purpose only, and residential properties must be non-owner-occupied. Closing timelines depend on title condition, the valuation required and how quickly conditions are cleared. Not every transaction qualifies for the maximum loan-to-value.
What is a secured business loan?
A secured business loan is long-term financing for business purposes, secured by commercial or investment real estate the borrower already owns or is acquiring. The money goes into the business rather than into property. Personal income is not verified and there is no debt-to-income calculation. Approval rests on the collateral, the leverage, the credit profile and the structure of the transaction, which is a different basis from how a bank, an unsecured business lender or a merchant cash advance provider underwrites.
How does the funding process work?
1. Prequalify
Finding out whether your scenario works comes first and takes about three minutes. No sensitive information is needed at this stage and the focus is on the property. Checking eligibility does not affect your credit score.
2. Approval
A detailed quote arrives along with the loan application. Once the application is complete and signed, the loan portal opens for document upload so the file can be pre-underwritten and approved. Initial approval is generally issued within 1-2 business days.
3. Appraisal
The appraisal is ordered once approval is issued. While it is underway the file keeps moving, with the remaining conditions cleared in parallel rather than waited on in sequence.
4. Closing and funding
Closing is scheduled at a time and place that works for you, and the title company or closing attorney sends a settlement agent with the closing package. Your loan advisor is available during closing for anything that comes up.
What can the money be used for?
Business purpose is the only real constraint on how the proceeds are used, and it covers more than most owners expect.
Eligible uses include:
Working capital. Consolidating merchant cash advances and other short-term business debt. Inventory. Equipment. Expansion or an additional location. Payroll and operating costs through a slow stretch. Tax obligations. Purchasing or refinancing the building the business operates from. Other legitimate business purposes are reviewed on the same basis.
Eligible Uses
✓ Working capital
✓ MCA consolidation
✓ Inventory
✓ Equipment
✓ Debt Consolidation
✓ Expansion
✓ Payroll
✓ Operating Costs
✓ Repairs
✓ Tax obligations
✓ Other business purposes
Ineligible uses include:
Consumer, personal, family or household purposes. A primary residence cannot secure the loan, and personal expenses are not an eligible use of proceeds. This is business financing only.
Ineligible Uses
❌ Consumer use
❌ Personal use
❌ Family use
❌ Household use
Over-stacked short-term debt is the most common reason a business owner pledges real estate. Advances taken on top of one another, sometimes four or five deep, each with its own daily or weekly remittance, can consume the receipts a business needs to operate before anything else gets paid. A single long-term loan secured by property retires those balances at once. The remittance schedule becomes one monthly payment, the cost of capital drops substantially, and the cash flow those advances were absorbing comes back to the business.
The consolidation does not have to be the whole transaction either. Where the equity supports it, a business can clear the existing balances and take additional capital out in the same loan, which is often the difference between surviving the cleanup and being able to do something with what comes after it.
What none of that does is fix the reason the debt was taken on in the first place. That conversation is worth having before the loan closes rather than after.
Who funds a secured business loan?
GreenBridge funds secured business loans directly. Where a scenario does not fit the long-term program, GreenBridge does not pass the file to another long-term lender. It generally means the file needs a short-term structure for a period first, which is a different product and a different conversation. Additional collateral and subordinate financing are both considered before it comes to that.
Do you require time in business, revenue or tax returns?
None of the three as qualifying thresholds. There is no minimum time in business, no minimum monthly revenue and no industry restriction. Personal income is not verified either, so no W-2s, pay stubs or personal tax returns, and there is no personal debt-to-income ratio. This is not revenue-based lending and it is not underwritten the way a merchant cash advance or an unsecured business loan is, where deposits, months in business and industry decide the answer. Here the real estate decides it. One exception applies where the building is one your own business occupies, which asks for one year in business and a one-year profit and loss statement showing the business is not operating at a loss. That statement is unaudited, does not need to come from an accountant, and is not verified. You state it, the same way you state income on the application.
How is a secured business loan different from an SBA loan?
An SBA loan is often the better answer, and a business that fits SBA underwriting and can work to its timeline should use it. The two look at different things. SBA underwriting weighs personal income, time in business, industry and global cash flow, and approval runs through a process with its own schedule. A secured business loan looks at the real estate instead, so a business that does not fit that underwriting model, or needs a decision sooner, still has a route to long-term capital. The trade is that this financing has to be secured by real estate, so a business with no property to pledge is not a fit.
Who qualifies for a secured business loan?
Qualification is based on the real estate and the transaction rather than on the business's paperwork. There is no minimum credit score. Real estate obligations reported on credit must be current when the new financing closes. A personal guarantee is required, and the proceeds must serve a business purpose. Nonprofits are generally not a fit, since the program asks an operating business to show it is not running at a loss.
A new business with little or no operating history can qualify when the collateral is real estate it or its owner already holds, which is a route most business lenders close off entirely. Where the transaction is the purchase of the building the business will occupy, the one year in business and profit and loss (unaudited) requirements apply, so a true startup is generally not a fit for that particular structure.
If the transaction is an investment property purchase, refinance or cash-out, and the proceeds are going back into real estate rather than into an operating business, stated income loans is the page written for you. If the property is in active foreclosure, see foreclosure bailout loans. An active bankruptcy has to be discharged before long-term financing is available, and a short-term structure is usually what bridges the gap.
What property can secure a business loan?
Eligible commercial property is multifamily of five or more units, mixed-use, office, retail, strip retail, warehouse and light industrial, self-storage, commercial condominium, automotive and daycare. A building your own business operates from is eligible as an owner-user transaction.
Residential investment property also qualifies as collateral, meaning single-family homes, condominiums, townhouses and two to four unit buildings. Residential collateral must be non-owner-occupied. This program cannot be secured by a primary residence.
More than one property can secure a single loan. Where one building does not support the amount needed, additional eligible real estate can be pledged and leverage evaluated across the combined collateral.
GreenBridge lends in 31 states. Property location, marketability and comparable sales support are considered on every transaction.
How much capital can your real estate support?
What the business can raise comes down to what the property is worth and how much is already owed against it. Loan amounts run from $75,000 to $10,000,000. Loans above $2,000,000 on one to four unit residential property are reviewed case by case. Commercial loans run from $100,000 to $5,000,000.
Maximum leverage is up to 75% loan-to-value on eligible residential collateral, on multifamily of five or more units and on mixed-use, and other commercial property caps at 70%.
Credit moves leverage rather than eligibility. A strong profile can reach the full applicable maximum for the property type, and a weaker one typically reduces the leverage and pricing available rather than closing the program off. At the low end of the range, maximum leverage is generally around 50 percent. Where a particular file lands depends on the whole picture rather than on the score by itself.
Where one property does not support the amount the business needs, additional eligible real estate can be pledged and leverage evaluated across the combined collateral. Several properties can sit under a single loan with one payment. An existing balance on a property does not rule it out, since what matters is the equity available across everything pledged.
When the business is buying the property it will operate from, eligible purchase transactions can reach 90% combined loan-to-value with subordinate financing, most often a seller-held second mortgage. The GreenBridge first lien has to stay inside its own limit, so subordinate financing raises combined leverage without raising the first-lien cap, and it lowers the cash the business has to put in at closing.
What loan terms are available on a secured business loan?
The standard structure is a 30-year fixed-rate loan, fully amortizing, with principal and interest. The rate is fixed for the life of the loan, which is the difference that matters most against short-term business debt priced to be repaid in months.
Shorter amortizations of 15, 20 and 25 years are available. Choosing a shorter term does not by itself change the interest rate, so the trade is a higher monthly payment against less interest paid over the life of the loan.
An interest-only period of one to ten years can be selected on an eligible 30-year structure, which holds the payment down while capital is put to work. When the interest-only period ends, the remaining balance amortizes over whatever is left of the term at the same rate. Ten years of interest only on a 30-year loan leaves 20 years of principal and interest.
How fast can a secured business loan close?
Initial approval is generally issued within one to two business days of a completed application and the initial underwriting documents. A clean transaction often closes in approximately 10 to 15 business days, when the borrower, the title company and the appraisal all move promptly. The last three to five business days of that window are final clearance and closing, which begins once every borrower condition, title item and the appraisal are complete.
An appraisal is always required on this program, and appraisal and title work are the usual drivers of the overall timeline. The common delays are borrower document turnaround, appraisal scheduling and access, title defects or liens, insurance, entity documents and condominium or homeowners association items.
This is long-term money and it moves on a long-term timeline. Two situations point somewhere else for now. A transaction that has to close in days rather than weeks, and a business that does not yet meet the requirements for the long-term structure, most often one operating under a year that wants to buy its premises.
Neither is a dead end. Short-term financing secured by the same real estate can cover the gap, and the file can be refinanced into this program once the business qualifies. That is worth talking through before you pick a route, because the two loans are planned together rather than one happening after the other.
What does a secured business loan cost?
Rates start at 7.54% on qualifying transactions and are quoted per transaction. Pricing moves with the property, the leverage, the credit profile and the current rate sheet.
The cost that matters most is usually not the rate. Short-term business debt is repaid out of daily or weekly receipts over a matter of months. This is amortized over as long as 30 years. Two financings can carry similar headline numbers and have completely different effects on what a business has available to operate with each week.
Underwriting is $1,995 on residential collateral and $2,995 on commercial. Processing is $995 under $100,000, $495 from $100,000 to $249,999, and waived at $250,000 and above. Origination follows the current GreenBridge fee schedule and is disclosed with your loan terms.
The standard prepayment penalty is a five-year declining structure, 5% in year one stepping down to 1% in year five. The period can generally be shortened to as little as one year at roughly 0.375 points for each year removed, though shortening it does not reduce the year-one percentage.
Checking eligibility does not affect your credit score. Prequalification and initial pricing run without a score-impacting credit pull, and a credit report is pulled later in underwriting before the loan can fund.
Common situations
Business owners come to GreenBridge when the usual routes do not work, and the reason is different every time. The following are anonymized examples of transactions GreenBridge has worked on. Details have been changed to protect borrower privacy.
Five merchant cash advances across two restaurants
The situation
The borrower ran two restaurants and owned both buildings. He had taken two merchant cash advances against one location and three against the other. All five came out daily. By the time the remittances cleared each morning, the money the restaurants needed to operate was already gone, and a cash flow analysis showed the business was funding the advances before it funded itself. His credit had gone the same way and was sitting below 600. Another advance would have bought a few weeks and made the position materially worse.
How we made it work
One of the two buildings carried substantial equity. It sat in a suburban market rather than a city, so the review came down to comparable sales, and the value supported the transaction. All five positions were paid off at closing. He had been spending thousands of dollars a day servicing that debt, and the new monthly payment came in below what a single week of advance payments had been costing him. He also took roughly $65,000 out on top of the consolidation, which went into renovating one of the dining rooms.
A year and a half in, expanding, and none of the options fit
The situation
The business was growing and the owner had already ruled out advances. What he had instead were three bad options. A term loan in the mid to high teens, which cost too much. A private investor willing to fund him at a better rate in exchange for twenty percent of the company, which he was not giving up. And an SBA loan, which meant years of tax returns and business financials, a pile of documentation, and an open-ended wait for an answer he could not count on. He had been in business a year and a half and wanted to buy a second location.
How we made it work
The real estate carried the file, so time in business and financial history were not the deciding factors. He got a competitive fixed rate on a 30-year term, which kept the payment low enough that a new location did not have to carry an aggressive repayment schedule while it found its feet. Documentation stayed light and the timeline stayed predictable. He kept all of his equity.
A cash business that could not show it on paper
The situation
The borrower owned an ice cream shop and the building it trades from. It is a cash-heavy retail business, and neither his tax returns nor his bank statements reflected what the shop actually took in. Every lender he approached underwrote those two documents and stopped there. He was not asking for much either, roughly fifteen to twenty percent of what the property was worth, and he already owed about half its value on an existing mortgage.
How we made it work
Business revenue was never the basis of the review. The property was, and the equity comfortably supported what he needed. He took his cash out at a fixed rate on a long-term structure, with the emphasis on the asset rather than on paperwork that was never going to tell the story. The business occupies the building, so the file was reviewed as an owner-user transaction, which asks for a simple, unaudited profit and loss statement rather than verified revenue.
Frequently Asked Questions
What can I use a secured business loan for?
Do I need to show tax returns or bank statements?
Do I need monthly revenue to qualify?
Can a new business qualify?
How is this different from an unsecured business loan?
Can I use this to pay off merchant cash advances?
Can my business occupy the building?
What property can I use as collateral?
Can I use more than one property as collateral?
Are there prepayment penalties?
What states do you lend in?
About GreenBridge Loans
GreenBridge Loans has been providing business-purpose financing since 2020, on investment and commercial real estate. Where a scenario fits our own guidelines we fund it directly, and where it does not we may be able to arrange financing through the GreenBridge Lending Network.
Last materially updated on September 20, 2026.