With banks tightening standards andn looking for 30% down to get a loan, many buyers are getting creative with sellers to get the transaction done. As the Business Journal puts it, these are old methods that are getting more popular:

The methods, which are used in lieu of applying for a new loan with a lender, aren’t new to the commercial real estate industry. Seller financing is used when the seller acts like a bank to lend some or all of the purchase price to the buyer. Sale-leasebacks are used when the owner of the property sells to an investor but stays in the building as a tenant, and assumable financing is used when the buyer assumes an existing loan from the seller.

“Before 2008, you didn’t see a lot of it because it wasn’t necessary,” said John Richardson, president of Grubb & Ellis/Phoenix Realty Group Inc. But as the credit crisis intensified during the second half of 2008, so did the volume of alternative forms of financing.

Among those deals was an industrial property on the Westside. Brian Bartlett, vice president of Grubb & Ellis/Phoenix Realty Group, represented the seller in the deal, which required both seller financing and the sale-leaseback of the facility.