Don't paint yourself into a corner:

With regard to structure of loan, at outset, consider all different ways your project may play out and plan appropriately. For example, if there is a chance that you will convert your newly acquired multifamily or mixed-use property to condominiums sometime down road, you will want to be 100% sure that your lender will agree to having their loan repaid as units are sold (and as their collateral is whittled away). A long-term fixed rate might be a terrific play given today's interest rates, but not if you might convert your new project to condominiums and may therefore need to prepay your mortgage incrementally.

Similarly, if there's a good chance that you might sell property within a few years of your closing, plan carefully about your prepayment penalty and/or your new lender's willingness to permit a buyer to assume mortgage.

To sum up: There are enough things that can go wrong and/or cause delays. In order to achieve a smooth closing, use any slack time to move as many of obvious tasks from "to do" column to "completed" column sooner, rather than later. When crunch time comes just before closing, you'll want to be concentrating on any important loose ends in mortgage documents, rather than being distracted by trivia and "white noise" of routine tasks that should have been completed weeks earlier.

Gregg Winter, President Winter & Company Commercial Real Estate Finance 13 East 37th Street, NYC 10016 212 532 1122 ext. 1 gregg@winter-co.com www.winter-co.com