Loans Help Turn Home into Offices & Canadian Lodge into Showplace

HACKENSACK, NJ, May 2, 2006 – Richard and Julie Romano of Seven Watchung, LLC had plans for the house. They wanted to convert a 2,100 square foot single family home in Summit, NJ into professional office space, while adding ancillary parking for 13 cars in the rear of the lot. This tree-dense suburban community is nestled in the hills of the Watchung Reservation with six square miles of broken hills at a 450-foot elevation. Summit is a tapestry of retail and commercial businesses with an abundance of specialty and gift shops, clothing stores, home furnishings, restaurants, bakeries, fine wine outlets, and movie theatres. In other words, an ideal community for a professional office building.

So with the home in question as collateral, the Romanos went looking for a loan. After some time, they were introduced to Kennedy Funding, a direct private lender in Hackensack, New Jersey. And the rest, as the saying goes, is history.

Jeffrey Wolfer, president and co-CEO of Kennedy Funding, had this to say: “The property in Summit is in a very attractive location for conversion to office space, as there’s a dense concentration of business ventures in Summit. The home is on half an acre and zoned for office and residential, and the business plan is good. Seven Watchung is buying the property for $1.5 million, and we were happy to make them a $975,000 loan.”

Kennedy wasn’t through for the day, however. In their second loan closing in 24 hours, they went north and made a $600,000 loan to John Wegnar in Ontario, Canada. Wegnar had purchased the Northwoods Waterfront Lodge on the water in Red Lake, and wanted to renovate the structure. So he immediately began to give the lakeside lodge a complete face-lift, installing log veneer walls, new carpeting, plumbing and electrical fixtures, even cabinetry and furniture hand-crafted by Wegnar himself out of knotty pine.

However, there was more that had to be done to the lodge before it was complete. He needed a loan in order to finish the project. So with his property as collateral, he went shopping. And was fortunate enough to find Kennedy Funding.

“Kennedy has a reputation for accepting the kinds of collateral that most other ‘traditional’ lenders won’t touch,” said Wegnar. “They granted me the loan much quicker than I ever expected. I doubt I could ever have gotten this kind of attention from a bank.”

Kennedy Funding’s streamlined evaluation process gives them the ability to issue loan commitments in as little as 24 hours, with closings in as little as five days, and often in no more than two weeks. With a deep source of funds at their disposal, available loans range from $1 million to $100 million and more when the need is there. Part of their uniqueness comes from a policy based upon flexibility, as witnessed by their willingness to accept raw land as collateral, and to fund developments in international locales as far-flung as Fiji.

While specializing in commercial real estate loans, Kennedy has funded such diverse enterprises as high-profile golf courses, amusement parks, TV and radio stations, airlines, and sports complexes, among others. Professionals including land-use developers, resort builders, entrepreneurs, and prominent businessmen have used the services of Kennedy Funding to great success. They can finance up to 65% loan-to-value for commercial land development, acquisitions, workouts, refinancing, bankruptcies, and foreclosures.