Have you refinanced a commercial office building?

[Henri Meli]

Just curious if any of the experienced investors have had to refinance a commercial office building in the past. I own a building that I purchased at about 65% occupation. It is now 95% occupied with long term leases signed (2020 and beyond) and is cash flowing well.  Some of the leases were below market, but have 6% yearly escalations. I have owned the building for 15 months. The lender I used to purchase the building does not want to refinance at this time. I have a prepayment penalty.

Have you had to refinance a commercial building? How did you assess the actual value? Do I need to use a third party to re-assess the building value based on the new NOI prior to looking for a new loan? Will the new interested/potential lender use their own third party to re-assess the value of the asset? When I purchased the building, the bank required an appraisal for which a third party was hired. Should I go back to the folks who did the first assessment and provide them the new data (all leases, expenses for the last 15 months, ... etc ) for another assessment?

[Ken Jernigan]

You're welcome to go get your own appraisal, but any lender will want to order it themselves. Sometimes it's possible to re-transmit the appraisal to the lender but it has to be an acceptable appraiser and a recent appraisal. In any case, there's no sense in paying for two appraisals. You should be able to get a good estimate of value based on market cap rates. The lender can then process the re-fi based on a minimum appraisal value. Do you know any commercial realtors who could ballpark the value for you?