Hello From SE Wisconsin!

Hey everybody, I’m Alex and I’m looking to buy a small/medium size laundromat! Huge fan of the podcast, I’ve been watching it and soaking up the resources since this past October or so. I’ve also been following Dave Menz, big fan of him as well. Just now decided to make an account as I get more serious in this journey.

I work in apartment leasing and management right now. It’s not exciting or glamorous but I’m good at it and it pays my bills! I’m working with a partner who wants to provide considerable funding and take a more hands off approach. This is great for me because I’m all about the process and planning but I don’t make enough to get started all by myself. I’ll be keeping my full time job as I take the lead in running the operation, I plan on stopping by before and after work to clean up, refill vending machines and just generally check on things. I’m willing to do whatever it takes, within the realm of honesty and integrity, to make this happen!

My partner’s funding should be able to cover an SBA down payment (I’m thinking 10%-15%) and I’m going to be looking for seller financing on top of that. I’ve heard of some interesting seller finance contingencies that I’d also like to fit in if possible (eg., installments to be proportional to revenue, etc.)

Does anyone here have experience working with SBA lenders? I recently bought a house and in the beginning thought that I’d be going for an FHA loan, only to find that there are more strict requirements on the house itself and extra fees that made it not worth going through the hassle, so I went conventional. Although I’ve heard from several people that getting an SBA loan is like free money, I’d also heard basically the same thing about FHA. I know that the SBA will be scrutinizing of both the deal itself and the financial capabilities of our partnership, but I really need to know to what degree and whether or not it will still be possible for us to put a deal through with that in mind.

Questions like that, a billion others and the hope to make connections are why I’m here. Thanks for having me!

Alex