The Complete Commercial Loan Package: Checklist and Template

A commercial loan package is the set of documents a lender needs to underwrite your deal — and a complete one covers four things: the property (rent roll, trailing-12 operating statements, photos, leases), the borrower (personal financial statement, schedule of real estate owned, tax returns, entity documents), the deal (executive summary, sources and uses, purchase agreement or payoff statement), and the plan (pro forma and business plan for anything that isn't stabilized). The full checklist is below, organized exactly the way lenders review it. Deals don't usually die because the package was wrong — they stall because it was incomplete, and every missing document adds a round trip.

Loan officers and credit committees see hundreds of submissions. The packages that move fast share one trait: the lender never has to ask for anything twice. Here's what goes in, why each piece matters, and where borrowers most often slow themselves down.

The commercial loan package checklist

1. The deal: framing documents

• Executive summary (1–2 pages). The single most important document in the package — and the one most borrowers skip. It should state the ask (loan amount, target leverage, rate type, term), describe the property in three sentences, summarize the numbers (NOI, purchase price or basis, requested LTV/LTC), introduce the sponsor, and explain the plan. A lender should understand the entire deal before opening a single attachment. (A template for this section is below.)
• Sources and uses. Where every dollar comes from and where it goes: loan proceeds, sponsor equity, and any mezzanine or preferred pieces on one side; purchase price, closing costs, capex budget, reserves, and fees on the other. The two columns must match to the dollar.
• Purchase and sale agreement (for acquisitions) or the payoff statement / existing loan terms (for refinances). Lenders read the PSA for the price, the closing deadline, and any unusual contingencies.

2. The property: income and condition

• Current rent roll. Unit- or suite-level: tenant name, square footage, lease start and end, current rent, escalations, and any concessions. For multifamily, include occupancy history if you have it. This is the first document most underwriters open.
• Trailing-12 operating statements (T-12). Monthly income and expenses for the last twelve months, ideally alongside the prior two year-end statements. Underwriters use this to build their own NOI — if your T-12 and your pro forma tell wildly different stories, expect questions.
• Commercial leases (or standard lease form for multifamily). For retail, office, and industrial deals, lenders read the major leases themselves: term, options, co-tenancy clauses, and anchor tenant provisions all affect how the income is underwritten.
• Property photos and location detail. Exterior, interior, and site photos, plus the basics: year built, square footage, unit or suite count, parking, and recent capital work.
• Capex history and budget. What's been spent, what's planned, and — for value-add deals — the scope and timeline behind the renovation number in your sources and uses.

Third-party reports — the appraisal, the Phase 1 environmental site assessment, and the property condition report — are typically ordered by the lender after a term sheet is signed, not supplied by you. But if you have recent reports from a prior financing, include them; they speed up early screening even when the lender re-orders.

3. The borrower: credit and track record

• Personal financial statement (PFS) for each guarantor: assets, liabilities, net worth, and liquidity. Most lenders have their own form; a clean, current PFS on any standard form works for initial underwriting.
• Schedule of real estate owned (SREO). Every property each sponsor owns: address, asset type, value, debt, lender, maturity date, and cash flow. This is how lenders assess both your track record and your global exposure — including maturities that could compete for your liquidity.
• Tax returns. Typically two to three years, personal and entity-level, for the sponsors and the borrowing entity.
• Entity documents. The org chart from the property up to the individuals, formation documents, and the operating agreement for the borrowing entity. On entity-structure questions, lenders care less about the structure you chose than about seeing it documented clearly.
• Track record / bio. A short sponsor deck or one-pager: relevant deals completed, current portfolio, and the team. For newer sponsors this is where a strong co-GP or property manager earns their keep.

4. The plan: for anything that isn't stabilized

• Pro forma. Month-by-month or year-by-year projections through stabilization and through the loan term, with assumptions stated — rent growth, lease-up pace, expense ratios, exit cap rate. Aggressive assumptions don't disqualify a deal; hidden ones do.
• Business plan. For value-add, lease-up, or construction deals: what you're doing, what it costs, how long it takes, and the evidence (comps, signed LOIs, contractor bids) that it works. Bridge lenders underwrite the plan as much as the property — see our guide to commercial bridge lenders for how they evaluate it.
• Exit strategy. How the loan gets repaid: sale, refinance into a permanent loan, or agency takeout — with the numbers that make the exit plausible at today's rates, not last cycle's.

Executive summary template

Copy this structure — one page, in this order:

1. The ask. "Seeking $X first mortgage on [property], targeting X% LTV / LTC, [fixed/floating], X-year term, closing by [date]."
2. The property. Asset type, location, size, occupancy, year built/renovated — three sentences.
3. The numbers. In-place NOI, purchase price or current basis, requested leverage, DSCR at the requested loan amount.
4. The sponsor. Who you are, portfolio size, relevant experience, guarantor net worth and liquidity (round numbers).
5. The plan. Stabilized: hold strategy and why the income is durable. Transitional: scope, budget, timeline, stabilized value, exit.
6. The team. Property manager, GC (if construction), and the broker or advisor running the process.

"Lenders rarely reject a deal because the package looked bad — they deprioritize it because it was incomplete," says Yaakov Zar, founder and CEO of Lev. "The packages that get quoted fast are the ones that answer the underwriter's first ten questions before they're asked. That's not about design. It's about completeness and internal consistency."

The mistakes that stall packages

• Sending a data dump instead of a package. Forty unlabeled PDFs in an email thread forces the underwriter to build your deal for you. Organize documents by the four categories above, with a cover index.
• Numbers that disagree with each other. The rent roll says one NOI, the T-12 implies another, and the exec summary quotes a third. Reconcile before you send — underwriters treat internal inconsistency as a credibility signal.
• A stale PFS or SREO. Anything older than a quarter triggers a refresh request, which is a week you didn't need to lose.
• Hiding the weak spot. Every deal has one — a tenant rolling at maturity, a market with soft comps, a first-time sponsor. Address it in the exec summary with your mitigant. Lenders find it either way; finding it themselves costs you trust.
• Packaging for the wrong lender. A perfect package sent to a lender who doesn't do your asset type, size, or market is still a dead end. Match first, package second — our guide on how to find the right CRE lender covers that half of the problem.

Assemble it once, use it everywhere

The painful part of a loan package isn't knowing what goes in it — it's pulling the pieces out of email threads, folders, and spreadsheets, then re-assembling a variant of the same package for every lender who asks. That's mechanical work, and it's exactly what software should do.

On Lev, you upload the deal documents once: Lev Vault organizes them into a permissioned data room with a checklist that tracks what's outstanding, Lev Memo drafts the offering memorandum and summary work product from the documents themselves, and Lender Search puts the package in front of lenders that actually fit the deal. Every fact stays tied to its source document, so when a lender asks where a number came from, the answer is one click.

If you have a live deal to package, the fastest way to see it is to try it — start for free. And if you're still deciding which lenders should receive the package, start with our guide to the best commercial real estate lenders in 2026.