HELOC alternative for LLCs?

[Jenny L.]

Thanks in advance for your insight. Here's our rehab and resell situation:

Elderly parent currently owns the property OUTRIGHT. Three adult children have taken control of it. Our company would enter into an equity partnership with them, forming a new LLC for protection for all involved, the LLC would be named on the deed. Looking like they will be 85% of the LLC, we would be 15%. We, the rehabbers, would be responsible for the entire renovation and sale. The adult children, silent partners.

We wanted to have the newly-formed LLC take out a HELOC for the repairs for a 8 month timeframe — house is owned outright, the ARV is five times the cost of repairs so the HELOC math would have been a slam dunk — HELOC qualifiers don’t get better than this. But we now know LLC’s cannot obtain HELOCs, only individuals. This is a newly formed LLC — just for the sake of this project and protection for all — there are no 3 years of tax returns, bank statements to show this is a "stable business", like many local banks request for their BLOCS. 

Is there a product available to LLCs that's very similar to a HELOC, that is secured against the asset, but doesn't have extreme costs like hard money, typical portfolio loans for flippers, etc.? A construction loan perhaps, but at what terms? Something else?

[Patrick Liska]

You just said it in the last paragraph, a construction loan will work, you will only pay interest for a certain time period before it switches to a conventional or commercial loan. being the house is under an LLC you will have to go to a commercial mortgage specialist at your bank and they will set it all up. i did this with one of my properties, purchased it with equity loan from my private residence, then took a construction loan from the bank to do the work and based it on the ARV and the rental income that would be coming in, the work was more than what i paid for the house, converted a split entry single family home to a 2 family, everything brand new inside. you may be able to get the repairs done and on the market before the loan goes from interest only to a P&I loan.