Commercial bridge loans for Waco projects and cash-out.
Access equity or finance a project before permanent financing. Flexible commercial bridge across property types, with terms up to 24-36 months and loan sizes up to $10M. Waco's demand sits with Baylor, the hospitals and the I-35 industrial base, and no house publishes vacancy or cap rates here. Business-purpose only, and every structure is set in underwriting.
Typical figures, subject to underwriting and market conditions. Not a commitment to lend.
How it works
Use bridge capital to reposition an asset, buy out a partner, or stabilize before a refinance. We move quickly on commercial deals that banks find too time-sensitive. When the asset is stabilized, we refinance you out of the bridge and into long-term permanent debt, which we also place in house, so you have a clear exit from day one.
What kind of commercial property actually anchors demand in Waco?
Institutional payroll, not a growth story. Baylor employs 5,698 people on top of its 19,858 students, and two competing hospital systems (Ascension Providence and Baylor Scott and White Hillcrest) plus a VA medical center and VA regional office give the metro an unusually deep healthcare and medical-office base for its size. The industrial and food-processing spine runs Sanderson Farms (1,200), Mars Wrigley (885), L3Harris (843), AbbVie (747), Cargill (603), and SpaceX's McGregor rocket test facility (590), which supports small-bay flex and warehouse demand along the I-35 corridor. Total metro payrolls were essentially flat in June 2026 (141,794, up 0.2% year over year), so the case here is stability, not absorption. No metro CRE vacancy, rent, or cap-rate data was found for Waco; underwrite the specific tenant and lease. See our CRE bridge program for terms.
Why does a Waco commercial deal need a bridge loan instead of a bank term loan?
Because a bank waits for the asset to already cash flow, and Waco deals are usually mid-repositioning. The tenant base is institutional and durable (Baylor, the hospital systems, the VA, the industrial employers), but that same stability means a bank underwriting committee wants a stabilized rent roll before it will commit. We fund the gap with our own capital, up to $10M and up to 75% LTV, interest-only, for 24 to 36 months, then refinance you into permanent debt we also place in house. Waco's commercial building permits run $0.28 per square foot for the first 100,000 square feet and $0.14 per square foot after that, with plan review at the greater of $100 or 25% of the permit fee, so ground-up or heavy build-out costs are modest next to the carry on a slow lease-up.
Does a heavy renovation near Baylor trigger extra zoning requirements on a commercial or multifamily property?
It can, if the property sits in the College and University Neighborhoods overlay. Waco's CU overlay applies to new development or a substantial renovation, defined by the ratio of renovation cost to the building's appraised value: 30% above $200,000 in appraised value, 40% between $100,000 and $200,000, and 50% below $100,000. Roof, HVAC, electrical, plumbing, foundation, and rotten-wood repair are excluded from that ratio. Once triggered, the overlay adds requirements including one parking space per bedroom, a ten-foot pedestrian way along the street, landscape screening, and height limits of 60 feet in Zone 1 and 35 feet in Zones 2 and 3. The exact streets inside each CU zone are on a boundary map we have not verified, so confirm zoning on the parcel before underwriting a Baylor-adjacent repositioning.
Is there published cap rate or vacancy data for Waco commercial real estate?
No, and we won't pretend otherwise. No public source we could locate tracks Waco metro CRE vacancy, absorption, rents, or cap rates for any asset class. That is a real gap next to a market like Dallas or Austin, and it means a Waco commercial file gets underwritten on the specific rent roll, lease terms, and tenant credit in front of us, not a published benchmark. What we do have is durable: institutional payroll (Baylor, the hospital systems, the VA), a stable industrial employer base along I-35, and a residential tax stack of 2.2484 per $100 in the city of Waco that any mixed-use or adjacent-residential deal has to carry. Talk to us about the specific asset.
How does hail risk affect underwriting on a Waco commercial asset?
Size the insurance line to a bad hail year, not an average one. McLennan County paid $58.2 million in homeowners losses across 47,827 policies in 2025, or $1,216 per policy, with wind and hail at 53% of that total. In 2023, the same county paid $120.6 million, or $2,575 per policy, with wind and hail at $1,986 per policy, about 77% of losses that year. That figure is homeowners data, not commercial, but it shows the peril mix an underwriter should assume for any Waco property: hail-driven, lumpy year to year, and the dominant loss category by far. McLennan County carries no coastal wind exposure since it sits roughly 180 miles from the Gulf. No county average commercial or homeowners premium dollar figure was found; do not underwrite to a specific premium without a current quote.
With no published Waco cap rate or vacancy data, how do you set the value a bridge loan sizes to?
Off the rent roll and leases in front of us, and we lend up to 75% of that value. We lend up to 75% LTV and up to $10,000,000, interest-only, on terms of 24 to 36 months. On a $2,000,000 Waco building that is up to $1,500,000 from us and $500,000 of equity from you (2,000,000 x 75% = 1,500,000), on a purchase or as a cash-out against something you already own. Since we could not find published Waco vacancy or cap rate data, that value comes off the specific rent roll and lease terms in front of us rather than a benchmark. Subject to underwriting.
Do you check credit or ask for tax returns on a Waco bridge loan?
We run credit, but there is no minimum score, and we do not need your tax returns. A commercial bridge qualifies off the property and the equity, not W-2s or pay stubs. Credit carries far less weight than it would at a bank, and weak credit is normally answered with lower leverage rather than a decline. There is no hard credit pull to start. That is the whole reason a Waco asset in mid-repositioning funds here while a bank committee waits on a stabilized rent roll. Subject to underwriting.
More CRE Bridge questions, answered on the program page
Local rules move. Every tax rate, fee, ordinance and market figure here comes from a primary source and carries the date we read it, and we correct them as the rules change. Where a number is mid-change or we could not verify it, we say so rather than guess. Before you commit a budget, confirm anything that drives it with the city or county, and talk to your attorney or CPA on questions of law or tax.
Published by USA Mortgage Funding, LLC, NMLS #152588. Researched from primary sources by our team, drafted with AI assistance, and every figure checked against its source before publishing. Where an answer rests on a public record, that record is linked under it. Figures read on 2026-08-13.
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