Strategic Lending for Housing Development
The availability of appropriate housing for residents is a critical component of a functioning local economy. Lenders is often able to provide flexible gap financing to allow housing development of all sorts to proceed. Commercial property loans in downtown Elkins have secured buildings that now provide increased or improved housing units on the upper floors.
Our flexible financing, and community-minded and mission-centered lending, can mean enabling a developer to fund the purchase of a dilapidated building that has very little value as collateral, or pay for pre-development services that help determine the feasibility of a project.
Lenders has proven to be one of the best sources of financing for our more complicated and impactful housing development projects.
— Dustin Smith
Downtown mixed-use properties, historic rehabs, infill development, and projects that provide workforce and/or income-restricted affordable housing require multiple funding sources. Often the involvement of a CDFI that can absorb and mitigate a share of the risk can complete a package and drive a project forward.
CASE STUDY:
The Golden Rule
Belington, Barbour County
- 10 apartment units
- first floor commercial spaces
- historic rehabilitation
- $45,000 loan funded initial purchase of building and leveraged a $2.5 million project.

Big Timber Shows the Big Impact of Small Businesses
Matt and Ashley Kwasniewski were shopping around for startup capital for their craft brewery idea in 2012, just as we opened the doors of Lenders. None of the commercial ...
Read More
New Units Opening on the Banks of the Blackwater River
Woodlands Development and Lending is excited to open the doors to tenants at the new Blackwater Avenue apartments in Davis, WV in early 2022. This community complex of 8 ...
Read More
Microenterprise Loans Support Local Businesses
Woodlands is pleased to have the support of USDA-Rural Development (USDA RD) in providing lending and technical assistance to small businesses in our region. Through USDA RD we ...
Read More