Hello,
I was wondering if any has purchased a shelf corporation to help get financing for there real estate transactions. I also wanted to know if banks consider your personal credit even if you do have a corporation established with some history. Unfortunately, I’m going through a bankruptcy due to a bad investment with a national franchise… I will leave un-named. Concerned I waste the time and money to establish/buy an existing corporation to only be denied due to my personal credit.
Thanks,
KR
KR I have someone that you can possibly speak to on this even with bad credit.
Yes, banks typically look at your personal credit and ask for a personal guarantee IF your company has no credit history and assests of it’s own. Bankruptcy is certainly not the end of the world though and I’m sure their are many lenders that will take care of you as is.
If you’re looking to establish business credit separately from your personal credit it will take about a year and you need to follow a systematic approach:
1)Make sure your business entity (LLC, Corp, etc) is established correctly with proper business licensing, business phone & email, physical address (no P.O.s or virtual offices), EIN, State Tax ID if applicable, business bank account, etc (bank lenders check these things),
2)Open a D&B account,
3)Establish trade accounts with companies who give trade credit lines (however small) w/o personal guarantees AND report to D&B, Experian Business, etc (there is a lot of them out there),
4)Pay the trade lines early EVERY month (after a few short months you will have a D&B Paydex score that is very good – above 70),
5)After you have established a good Paydex number, apply for a cash line of credit w/o a personal guarantee (there are a lot of banks that will do this),
6)Make the “cash line” monthly payments early every month,
7)Keep growing your cash lines – within a year to 18-months you should have at least $200K in trade and cash lines of credit.
There are other steps as well but that was the jist of it.
I strongly recommend checking out the business credit forum on creditboards.com or using a professional business credit builder program if you are unfamiliar with building business credit. Full service programs range in cost from $2,500 to $10,000 including coaching but I’d stay away from it if you can (I’m speaking from an ongoing experience I’m having - live and learn I guess). You can also buy DIY business credit builder kits for around $500.
As far as the 2-yr seasoned “Shelf Corp” goes - it is supposed to get you the larger credit cash lines (<$200K) but you still have to build a credit history for it that will take another 6-months to a year. I was offered one for $4000 but turned it down. I suppose if you could get a Shelf Corp with a pre-existing credit history, D&B rating, and good Paydex score it might be worth doing (there is some controversy about this - ethically).
Of course, if you can fix your personal credit as well, it will help tremendously (a personal guarantee with a FICO of 680+ will get your company a $150K/10-yr business start up loan).