Altamonte Springs, Fla. – Mercantile Commercial Capital, LLC, Central Florida's leading provider of U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) 504 loans for small business owners who want to acquire or develop their own facilities, has just become the largest SBA 504 lender in the SBA's North Florida district office with an 11.5% market share. Christopher Hurn, president and chief executive officer of the firm, said, “MCC has catapulted into the top position in one of the two Florida SBA district offices in only our second year in business and in only our first full SBA fiscal year which just ended September 30th.”

 

The SBA divides Florida into two regions,” Hurn said. “In the north region, which includes Orlando, Jacksonville and the Panhandle, we are now the largest and most active originator of SBA 504 loans to small businesses,” Hurn said.

 

“Our team has worked tremendously hard to secure better financing for Florida 's small business owners. Much more so than even our much larger and better capitalized competitors,” Hurn stated.

 

“Our dedicated focus as the only company in the entire country to exclusively provide this type of financing has paid off for Florida 's small businesses,” Hurn commented.

 

SBA 504 loans typically finance 90% of the total project costs of owner-occupied commercial real estate through the use of a 50% conventional first mortgage and a 40% second mortgage that is a government-guaranteed bond placed by CDC's monthly throughout the nation at below-market interest rates. The equity requirement from small business people to own instead of rent their real estate facilities through 504 loans is usually half as much as conventional bank financing and the blended, effective interest rates are lower, fixed for a longer period of time and have longer amortizations.

 

The goal of SBA 504 financing is for healthy small businesses to continue their growth through their equity “savings” and commercial real estate expense reductions associated with owning. It is the goal of SBA 504 loans to create and/or retain one new job for every $50,000 in government-guaranteed financing provided.

 

“Altogether, we have helped create 299 jobs since July of last year,” Hurn said, “when we held our first closing.” Since January 1st of this year, MCC has closed 20 loans for a dollar volume of $19.649 million and created a total of 191 new jobs.

 

Hurn said he projects MCC will close more than 30 SBA 504 loans for a total of about $33 million and help create over 270 new jobs this calendar year.

 

MCC opened for business in February 2003 and now has offices in Orlando, Tampa, Miami, and Chicago with plans to open offices in West Palm Beach and Ft. Lauderdale before year end. The company is rapidly growing with plans to double its workforce by this time next year and significantly increase its market share of Florida 's SBA 504 loans.