Out of Home Lender and Investor: Billboard Loans

Views: 349
Billboard Loans partners (from left): Jim Penney, Ken Altena, Dave Westburg

This is the fourth of Billboard Insider’s out of home lender profiles.  Our previous profiles have covered Alerus Financial, Stark Capital Solutions, YESCO Financial  and Verde Capital.

Out of Home Lender: Billboard Loans

Transaction Size:  $25,000 to $1 million

Address: 1043 5th St., Kirkland, WA. 98033
Email: kenaltena@billboardloans.com
Phone:  206-636-8478
Billboard Loans is a private lender with 27 years experience lending to and investing in out of home companies.   The company’s partners are Dave Westburg, Ken Altena and Jim Penney.    We interviewed Billboard Loans partner Ken Altena.
What’s new at Billboard Loans over the past year?
We funded several loans for digital billboard construction, static billboard construction and easement purchases.  We also provided a line of credit so an out of home company could self insure digital billboards in coastal area where replacement insurance was prohibitively expensive.   In addition we invested equity in an independent midwest out of home company.  We have another equity deal in the works.
What transactions are you seeking?
We make loans and equity investments of up to $1 million in roadside billboard companies and transit advertising companies.  We are focused on the smallest transactions because that’s where money is tight.   Our loan portfolio currently includes loans between $74,000 and $1 million with an average loan size of $279,000.  No loan is too small.  We can do equity investments above $1 million by partnering with a family fund.
Pricing Trends?
We are a private lender without access to cheap FDIC guaranteed deposits.  The benefit of this is that we can move fast and face no regulatory scrutiny.  The drawback is that our loans are more expensive than bank loans..  Our loans are currently priced at 12%. We also collect a 2% Loan Fee at origination.  We make a lot of out of home construction loans because you can double or triple your value within one year by building right.  12% interest is cheap compared to doubling or tripling your equity value.
What makes you different from the other out of home lenders?

(1). We do not require third party appraisals or audited financials and we use our own in-house legal documents, which allows us to save our borrowers time and transaction costs.  Our transactions costs are normally 1% or less of the loan amount.  (2). We have no prepayment fees.  We like people to stay with us because they want to – not because it’s expensive to leave.  Finally, we are out of home company owners.  We understand the business from the inside so won’t waste your time with stupid questions.  (3). We have found a niche for first time borrowers and borrowers who want less than $1 million.  No loan is too small.  As our borrowers grow we can pass them on to other lenders who make larger and cheaper loans.  (4) We’ve been making out of home loans longer than most other lenders.   Our borrowers know we won’t exit the market in a recession or downturn.  We’ve been through 9/11 and the great recession and covid together and they like knowing that they can count on us in the bad times.

What trends are you seeing in the out of home market?
We are seeing healthy loan demand in the Southeast United states.  Texas to Florida and up the coast to the Carolinas.  Digital billboards are in high demand also but there’s still a place for static, especially along blue highways and in areas (like my state of Washington) which outlaw digital billboards on freeways.

To learn more about how Billboard Loans can grow your out of home company contact Ken Altena, kenaltena@billboardloans.com, 206-636-8478

 

To receive a free morning newsletter with each day’s Billboard insider articles email info@billboardinsider.com with the word “Subscribe” in the title.Our newsletter is free and we don’t sell our subscriber list.

Paid Advertisement

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Comments are closed.