Agora Data ventures into commercial real estate for dealers

Agora Data has begun underwriting commercial mortgages for its dealer and auto finance company partners as part of its holistic approach to financing. The new program, Agora Point, is designed to help the company’s finance partners make use of additional funding capital obtained through the company’s other lending program Agora Capital , Chief Executive Steve Burke told Auto Finance News . Agora Capital essentially triples finance companies’ lines of credit through a thrice-annual crowd-sourced securitization cadence. Dealers and small finance companies are not only limited by access to lending capital, but also by the size of their dealerships, Burke said. For example, “a dealer that is limited on capacity to $5 million [and then gets access to] more capacity of $15 or $20 million. So, to spend that capacity, they may have to increase the size of their facilities or open a second location.” Agora Data will underwrite the commercial mortgages and take a lien on the property, Burke said. The mortgages will be underwritten based on traditional mortgage underwriting models that factor in 10-year U.S. Treasury yields and the borrower’s credit worthiness. Agora is not the first auto lender to venture into commercial mortgages. Back in October 2019, Westlake Financial began underwriting commercial mortgages for its dealer partners through its program, Westlake Capital Finance. By yearend 2020, Westlake had grown its mortgage business 152% year over year, David Goff, Westlake’s vice president of marketing, said, although he did not provide specific figures on managed assets. “I definitely consider Westlake a strategic partner of Agora’s,” Burke said. “A lot of what we do is powered by Westlake. For instance, [Westlake] is servicing all of the loan collections.”

Agora Data ventures into commercial real estate for dealers

Agora follows Westlake Financial into underwriting commercial mortgages

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