If you work with investors you already know this feeling. You find the property, the numbers work, your client is genuinely capable — and the bank takes five weeks to say no because the property needs too much work or the borrower's last two tax returns look complicated. The deal dies, and you have nothing to show for the months you put into it.
Those clients are usually still fundable. Just not by a bank, and not with the product they were trying to use.
Why conventional financing kills investor deals
Bank lending is built around a borrower with W-2 income buying a property in good condition to live in. Investor deals break that model at nearly every point:
- The property is distressed, so it will not pass an appraisal for a conventional loan
- The borrower writes off income aggressively, so their tax returns understate what they earn
- The timeline is thirty days and the bank needs forty-five
- They already hold several mortgages and have hit a lender's property limit
None of those mean the deal is bad. They mean it is the wrong lender.
The products that do fund these
Asset-based real estate lending underwrites the property and the plan rather than the borrower's tax returns, which is why it closes deals banks decline:
- Fix and flip loans — purchase plus renovation, priced on after-repair value, typically closing in a couple of weeks. The default answer for a distressed property.
- Bridge loans — short-term financing for a client who needs to move before another sale completes, or who needs to close fast on something competitive.
- Ground-up construction — draw-based funding for building from land, which almost no retail bank will touch.
- Long-term investor financing — for holding rentals, qualified on the property's income rather than the borrower's personal returns. This one surprises people most often.
Your investor clients also frequently own operating businesses, and that opens a second category entirely — working capital, equipment, and lines of credit for the contracting company or the property management business they run alongside the portfolio.
What referring actually involves
Very little, deliberately. You send the client's name and a sentence about the situation, or you send them your referral link and they apply themselves. From there someone else collects the documents, works the file, and manages the client to closing. You are not learning loan products and you are not answering underwriting questions at nine at night.
You can stay as close to the deal as you want. Some agents want a weekly status update because the financing timeline drives their transaction; others want to hand it off and hear back when it funds. Both are fine.
What it pays
A 50/50 split of net profit on any deal that funds, whether that is a fix and flip loan or a line of credit for the client's business. Payouts run every Monday by ACH with no minimum, and every referral is trackable in a partner dashboard, so you are not chasing anyone to find out what happened.
There is no cost to join, no volume requirement, and no exclusivity. Sending one deal a year is a perfectly normal way to use this.
One thing to be careful about
Real estate license law governs what you can be paid and by whom, and the rules differ meaningfully between states — particularly around anything that touches a residential consumer transaction. Commercial and business-purpose lending referrals are generally treated quite differently from consumer mortgage referrals, and RESPA sits over the latter. If any part of your referral activity brushes up against owner-occupied residential financing, get your broker or your attorney to look at it first. Worth doing once, properly.
Where the deals actually come from
Agents who do well with this are not prospecting for it. They are noticing:
- The buyer who lost a property because their financing was too slow
- The investor client who mentions they are stuck at their bank's property limit
- The listing that keeps falling out of contract because buyers cannot fund the condition
- The past client who now wants to renovate rather than move
- The contractor you work with constantly who needs equipment or working capital
All of those are conversations you are already having.
If you want to be more involved in these files than a straight hand-off — and some agents do, particularly on investor deals where the financing timeline drives the transaction — the difference between referring and brokering is worth reading before you decide.
Turn declined deals into closed ones
Free to join, approved within 24 hours, and no obligation to send anything.
- 50/50 net profit split on every funded deal, across every product type
- Paid every Monday by ACH, with no minimum payout threshold
- 150+ lenders competing for the files you send
- Approved within 24 hours — no fees, no contracts, no volume commitment
Apply to the Loanable partner program — it takes about two minutes, and you will have a referral link and a partner dashboard the day you are approved.
Loanable is not a lender. We connect businesses with funding providers, and terms vary by deal.