Business Loans in Jacksonville
Jacksonville, Florida has the double distinction of being both the largest city in the southeastern United States by population, and also the largest city in the entire US by geographic area.
Situated in the northeast corner of Florida, Jacksonville traces its roots to some of the earliest European settlers in the Americas, and takes its name from Andrew Jackson, who was the first governor of Florida and would go on to be the seventh president of the United States.
With impressive beachfront, numerous rivers and lakes, as well as a vibrant set of over 500 distinct neighborhoods, Jacksonville has something to offer to almost anyone who visits, works, or lives within its borders.
Apply Now
Let BizFly Funding Help You Finance Your Business Needs Today
By submitting, I agree to the BizFly Funding Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
In terms of the economy and business community within Jacksonville, there’s a good deal of diversity, growth, and opportunity. Several market sectors that flourish within the Jacksonville area leverage the deepwater port of Jacksonville to gain a competitive advantage in their business.
Logistics, banking and finance, media and technology, and military and defense sectors are major contributors to the economy, along with a range of other industries.
Companies as diverse as CSX Corporation, Fidelity National Financial, Firehouse Subs, Stein Mart, and Venus Swimwear call Jacksonville home to their global or US headquarters.
Sports, culture, arts, and entertainment round out the impressive list of credentials that make Jacksonville a great place to run or start a business.
While these well-known brands may not run into roadblocks in obtaining working capital and funding for their growth and expansion, the same cannot be said of small businesses. Obtaining small business loans in Jacksonville is an essential aspect of establishing and operating a small business.
Funding for small businesses is critical, as they often have insufficient working capital or revenue to fully fund their personnel, equipment, inventory, and selling-related expenses on their own.
Small business loans are a reliable and simple way to access significant amounts of credit for many small businesses, but are also not the only way to do so.
Other small business financing options such as lines of credit, short-term loans, debt consolidation loans, and merchant cash advances are all part of the modern small business funding portfolio.
In all cases, it’s important that loans for Jacksonville businesses are matched up and aligned with the kinds of projects or term of funding that a small business requires.
Using a 3-year loan to pay for an expense that will yield a return on that investment in a year or less means you’ll be paying far more in interest than necessary, and vice versa.
It’s a bedrock principle of small business financing that owners should have a clear picture of how they intend to use the funds from their small business loan (or other financing product), and choose the financing option that makes the most sense, with the most advantages and fewest disadvantages for that particular use.
We’ll discuss those advantages and disadvantages in more detail later on in our guide.
At the same time, seeking small business loans in Jacksonville requires small business owners to find a good source of their funding. Many people may naturally gravitate towards banks and traditional financial institutions, many of which are based or have offices in the Jacksonville metro area.
However, for many small businesses, it may actually be easier, cheaper, and faster to seek small business funding from a private, non-bank lender instead.
We’ll tell you all about why that is the case, and highlight one of the best US small business lenders, BizFly Funding, below. Finally, we will highlight some of the basic requirements and processes for obtaining small business loans in Jacksonville.
These may vary somewhat from lender to lender, and from funding option to funding option, but will provide small business owners with a better general sense of how each small business funding option works, and what they will need to do to ensure the best odds of approval for their chosen kind of business loan in Jacksonville. So let’s get started!
Considerations for Obtaining a Small Business Loan in Jacksonville
As a small business owner, there are many different things you need to consider before and during the process of obtaining a small business loan.
Modern small business funding is actually far easier to obtain than in decades prior, thanks to a mix of new technology, new lenders, and a focus on customer service.
That leads quite naturally into one of the first key considerations you must address when seeking small business funding in Jacksonville or anywhere else in the US: are you going to borrow from a bank or a private lender?
This is a big decision, because it will determine many of the details of your lending experience going forward. First, let’s look at banks and traditional financial institutions, which most small businesses owners are familiar with, and typically utilize for one or more accounts.
While it may seem like banks are a good choice for obtaining business loans in Jacksonville, that can depend greatly on your creditworthiness, revenue, and business stability. Banks are, as with most businesses, out to make a profit for themselves.
To accomplish this, while respecting important capital covenants and regulatory requirements, they can only take on so much risk in their lending divisions.
Because of the high rates of failure in small businesses (an oft-cited statistic states that half of all small businesses fail within the first five years), small business lending is considered high risk.
As a result, many banks either shy away from offering small business loans and credit products entirely, or set ridiculously high bars in terms of their qualifications. This naturally filters out something like the bottom three quartiles of the credit/revenue/stability spectrum.
Often, the businesses who are most in need of quality and affordable small business funding in the first place have the hardest time obtaining it from a bank.
At the same time, even those banks who do offer business loans in Florida tend to only offer secured loans (loans that require collateral as part of their lending requirements). Secured loans typically come with lower interest rates for small business owners, but at a very high risk.
Collateral secures the loan, so if you default, the bank will seize the assets you have put up as collateral.
Often, because the way in which collateral is valued and assessed for lending purposes, the amount of collateral required can be several times the total value of the small business loan or credit product you are attempting to qualify for.
Risking $500,000 worth of equipment, inventory, or property for a $100,000 loan doesn’t make sound business sense to a lot of small business owners, with secured loans being a risk that is simply not worth the small savings on interest payments.
By contrast, many private, non-bank lenders offering small business loans in Florida typically offer unsecured loans – loans that don’t require any collateral.
The only downside for borrowers is that the interest rates on these kinds of small business funding tend to be slightly higher than on secured loans and credit products.
Most small business owners seeking business loans in Florida prefer the unsecured variety, since there is no collateral at risk. This collateral difference is a key factor in the decision-making process, but is not the only advantage offered by choosing a private lender over a bank.
Private lenders and the way in which they operate can provide a number of advantages over banks and traditional financial institutions, including:
- A greater acceptance and tolerance of risk, which translates into more-easily-met minimum eligibility requirements to qualify for business loans in Florida or elsewhere.
Often, this means a lower minimum credit score, lower monthly revenue, and shorter time in business as compared to the fairly restrictive and difficult-to-meet requirements imposed by banks.
- Generally, a faster application and approval process is available from private lenders.
Business owners looking for unsecured business loans and other financing often have a ticking clock – time is money, after all – and need their small business funding as soon as possible to jump on a valuable business opportunity or growth initiative.
Traditional, secured business loans from banks can takes weeks to obtain, because collateral valuation often takes weeks in and of itself.
By contrast, most private lenders offering unsecured small business loans in Jacksonville and throughout the US can have you applied, approved, and funded in a matter of days.
- As previously discussed, private lenders offer a lower amount of risk for business owners, due to the unsecured nature of the small business financing products that they offer.
- Increasing your approval odds, especially in the case where your business has bad credit or a limited credit history.
Small business funding in Jacksonville is often hard enough to obtain – when you have a bad credit score, it’s nearly impossible, at least when you are dealing with banks.
Yet, many newer businesses quite naturally struggle with finances and capital, and are far more likely to have less-than-stellar credit scores. Often, these small businesses are the most in need of affordable and easy access to working capital via small business loans and credit products.
Banks typically accept only the top 20-25% of credit scores, whereas most private lenders accept more than double that range. The net result is businesses with bad credit have much better approval odds at private lenders.
The totality of advantages for private lenders over banks is fairly clear based on the above points, and explains why more small businesses looking for business loans in Jacksonville and across the US tend to favor private lenders over banks.
Many private lenders are also specialized, working exclusively in a particular lending market, such as small business lending, which can be an additional advantage in helping you secure the right kind of small business funding.
Types of Small Business Financing Available Today
Once you’ve chosen the type of lender to provide your small business loan in Florida, the next step is to consider the different kinds of small business funding options that are available.
Each type of small business funding has various pros and cons associated with it depending on what kind of expenses or projects you need to finance.
It’s important, as a business owner, to understand the basics of how each of the different kinds of small business funding options work, as each is a bit different than the other.
This will enable you to align your expenses and choices with the funding option that will cost you the least in interest and offer the maximum number of advantages, with the fewest disadvantages.
One important note to keep in mind, however, is that here we’re discussing the pros and cons from a big picture, general standpoint.
Every lender will have their own eligibility criteria, offer different loan amounts, interest rates, and so on, which may alter the balance between pros and cons for that type of small business loan in relation to your particular business and financing needs.
Generally speaking, however, the following are the types of small business financing options available from most private lenders today, and the basics of how they work:
- Small business loans, which provide a lump sum of money up front when you receive the loan, and then require repayment of that principal, with interest, in equal payments over the term of the loan.
Repayment is typically monthly, and the loan terms are usually a few years in length.
- Short-term business loans, operating in a similar manner to ordinary small business loans, but on a much shorter loan term – often months to a year or so at most, compared with several years for an ordinary small business loan.
This shorter term means a faster pace of repayment, often daily or weekly, than the monthly payments required on an ordinary small business loan.
- Small business lines of credit, often compared to a credit card account, providing a revolving facility that lets you borrow as much as you need, pay interest only on the outstanding balance, and repay it over time.
You can continue to borrow in amounts as needed, provided the outstanding balance is below the maximum credit limit.
Unlike a credit card, however, you use a small business line of credit for cash withdrawals or electronic transfers, and are not limited to only making purchases with a credit card.
- Merchant cash advances, or MCA loans, offer a lump sum of cash, which is really a pre-selling of your future debit or credit card sales at a discount, which is then repaid directly by deductions made from those sales.
The beauty of this kind of small business financing is repayment is always tied to sales, and not the calendar, so there’s no chance of failing to make an “on time” repayment, and the debt service is never more than your sales can support in a given period.
- Debt consolidation loans, or loans designed to allow you to pay off several existing debts, especially those with high interest rates, and consolidate them into a single debt instrument, with a single monthly repayment, and a single servicer, saving you money in both interest and servicing fees.
- Special small business loans aimed at women-owned businesses, a demographic that traditionally has had a difficult time qualifying for and obtaining small business funding.
These loans help to offset and reverse this history of discrimination, and ensure better access to small business funding.
- Bad credit business loans, operating much like ordinary small business loans, but with lower requirements, particularly lower credit score requirements, which allow small businesses with bad credit or limited credit history to still access valuable small business funding in Jacksonville and elsewhere.
Why Many Small Businesses Choose BizFly Funding for Small Business Loans in Jacksonville, Florida, and the Entire US
For all of the reasons we’ve expressed above, it should be obvious why many small business owners seeking small business loans in Jacksonville, Florida, and throughout the US prefer unsecured loans from private lenders.
Naturally, the last step of securing a small business loan or small business funding for your business is picking your private lender, and applying for your chosen small business funding option.
We strongly encourage you to consider BizFly Funding as your small business lender of choice for business loans in Florida and parts beyond.
BizFly Funding is at the forefront of modern private lending, and works exclusively with the small business community. With a full portfolio of small business financing options, BizFly Funding provides options and flexibility for small business owners.
Loan and credit amounts of up to $1 million dollars are available for those businesses who qualify. BizFly Funding offers a fast and simple online application process, outstanding customer service, high approval odds, a fast approval process, affordable interest rates, and much more.
Each individual loan application and situation are different, of course, but speaking in general terms, BizFly Funding has very easily-met minimum eligibility requirements for the vast majority of the small business financing products that they offer.
The most popular small business funding options, including small business loans for Jacksonville businesses, have their associated requirements outlined below.
- Loan term of 2 to 36 months
- Minimum 6 months in business
- Credit score of at least 500
- $10,000 minimum monthly revenue
- Loan amounts of $5,000 to $1 million
- Interest rates of 9 to 45%
- Loan term of 6 to 24 months
- Minimum 12 months in business
- Credit score of at least 600
- $10,000 minimum monthly revenue
- Loan amounts of $15,000 to $1 million
- Interest rates of 9 to 45%
- Loan term is variable (repayment is based on sales and not tied to the calendar)
- Minimum 2 months in business
- Credit score of at least 500
- $8,000 minimum monthly revenue
- Loan amounts of $8,000 to $250,000
- Factor rates of 24 to 49%
- Credit line term is variable
- Minimum 6 months in business
- Credit score of at least 650
- $10,000 minimum monthly revenue
- Credit line amounts of $5,000 to $250,000
- Interest rates of 5 to 10%
It’s easy to get started with your pre-approval and application process at BizFly Funding. Simply log on, and fill out the request for a quote or online application form. In a few hours, a team member from BizFly Funding will get back to you and discuss your small business funding needs and options.
Once the loan agreement is signed, and all documentation provided, you can receive your funding – of up to $1 million – in as little as 1 business day.
That enables small businesses in Jacksonville, Florida, and throughout the US to take advantage of emerging opportunities, growth initiatives, hire more staff, buy more inventory, and expand their business along the path toward ultimate success.
To learn more or to start the application process, visit BizFly Funding online at https://bizflyfunding.com.
