How It All Started

It was July 1991 and BDM Mortgage Services (BDM) opened its doors for the very first time. BDM, however, did not start out arranging loans for churches. Instead, it started out like most other mortgage brokers in the state of California by arranging loans for homeowners on their residential property.

Just like with today’s church loans, those early loans on residential property were funded by our private party lenders. BDM continued with this residential lending for approximately the first three years it was in existence. Then one day we received a call from a Pastor asking if we could arrange a loan for his church. We noticed his church’s real estate had plenty of equity and we managed to convince some of our private party lenders to fund the loan for his church. The loan transaction went smoothly and the Pastor was a pleasure to work with.

It seems the word got out and eventually some additional churches came to BDM for a loan as well. In a relatively short period of time we had managed to arrange about half a dozen loans to various churches. Even with this very small sample size, we learned there were a few characteristics which were unique to these churches. First of all, and most important to the private party lenders, the majority of the churches who contacted us had equity in their real estate. These churches also had been in existence for 20, 30, 50 years and sometimes much longer. We also learned that most churches had a great deal of difficulty obtaining a loan from institutional lenders, such as banks.

Along with being great to work with, another feature which the private party lenders really appreciated was the simple fact that most churches made their payments on time! This may not seem to be that significant, but these private party lenders had experienced a great deal of slow paying borrowers among the residential loans they had previously funded. So, having the churches pay on time was a very positive experience.

As time went on, we became more educated about churches as we gained more experience working with them to meet their needs.   As a result BDM shifted gears completely. We stopped advertising to residential borrowers and instead focused all our efforts on advertising to churches. We haven’t looked back since.

At the beginning it was a challenge to get some of our private party lenders to make the switch as well from lending on residential property to lending on church property. After all, residential property was what they knew best and were most familiar. So, getting these lenders to recognize the advantages of lending to churches took some time and some convincing. Slowly, however, these private party lenders came around.

Today, church loans have become the first choice of all the private party lenders we use. As the years have gone by they have come to realize the benefits of lending to churches. After all, religion is not a fad and most of the churches we work with have been around for several decades. The membership for most churches is fairly steady and, as a result, the income for these churches is fairly steady as well. This gives the lenders a certain comfort level when lending to a church which is not always present on residential loans.

Having these private party lenders available is what enables BDM to arrange loans for churches which banks and other institutional lenders either can not make or choose not to make.

Loans Can Be Used For Any Worthwhile Purpose