A rough couple of years is on your credit report. It is not the whole file.
On commercial deals the property and the covenant carry most of the weight. Credit narrows the list of lenders rather than closing the door, and knowing which lenders remain is the useful part.
The situation as you experience it
There was a stretch that went badly. A business that closed, a divorce, a health year, a tenant who stopped paying. You dealt with it and moved on, and the report still carries it.
Now every conversation seems to start at the score rather than at the building.
Why this happens
A credit score is a proxy. It is what a lender uses to estimate behaviour when it does not know you, and it is cheap and fast, which is why it appears so early in the process.
On commercial files it carries less weight than on residential, because the property produces the income that repays the loan and the covenant stands behind it. The debt service coverage and the leverage matter more than the number does.
But it still gates. Many lenders have a written floor, and below it the file does not reach an underwriter at all, regardless of how good the building is. That is why bruised credit changes the list of lenders rather than the merits of the deal. The commercial mortgage requirements page sets out what else lenders weigh.
What your options actually are
Commercial lenders who weight the asset. Several lenders read the debt service coverage and the property first and the personal report second. Conventional pricing, and the first place to look.
Credit unions. Often willing to take a fuller view of a member's circumstances than a bank credit department can, with pricing close to conventional.
Alternative lenders. Priced for the risk and available where the conventional market is not. Our private and second mortgage page shows how that cost is built.
A stronger covenant or co borrower. Genuinely useful where such a person exists and understands what they are signing. Not something to arrange casually.
Expensive debt needs an exit
Alternative pricing is materially higher than conventional, and the gap compounds. That is acceptable when the loan is a bridge to somewhere: credit repaired over a term, a property stabilised, a sale planned, a refinance that becomes possible once the file looks different.
It is not acceptable as a destination. If there is no exit and no plan to build one, more expensive debt does not solve the problem, it accelerates it, and the property is the security. Where that is the situation the honest answer is to wait, repair what can be repaired, and come back in a year with a file that qualifies.
One more thing worth saying directly: recent mortgage arrears weigh far more heavily with a lender than an old consumer default. If the difficulty is in the past and the secured payments were kept current throughout, your position is considerably better than the score alone suggests.
What we would need to look at it
The rent roll or operating statements, the property address, and a short written explanation of the events behind the report with dates. That last piece does more work than borrowers expect, because a documented and finished problem is a very different thing to an unexplained one.
Credit and commercial lending.
Related situations
Send the property, not just the score.
The rent roll or operating statements, the property address and a short note on what happened. We will tell you which lenders will engage and what the pricing looks like.