You are two months behind on the lease and the landlord is talking about a lockout. Can funding cover it?

In many states a commercial landlord can change the locks on a defaulted tenant without going to court, subject to the lease and state law, and in the rest it takes a fast eviction filing. Either way, a business that loses its premises loses its inventory, its equipment access and its customers in the same afternoon. That is why two months of arrears is worth borrowing against in a way a two-month-old supplier invoice is not.

The landlord, though, does not want the space back. An empty unit costs them months of vacancy and a new buildout. A tenant who calls with a dated, written catch-up plan — arrears paid on a specific day, current rent on time from then — almost always gets the locks left alone. Make that call before you make any application.

Is next month covered? Not the arrears — next month. If the business fell behind because of a one-time hit (an equipment failure, a slow-paying customer, a bad quarter that has turned), then the arrears are a bridge and borrowing them is right. If it fell behind because rent is more than the business can carry, borrowing the arrears buys sixty days and the same lockout letter in the spring, with an advance on top.

Owners who have been through it say the same thing: be honest about which one you are before signing anything. If it is the second, the conversation is with the landlord about a rent reduction, a downsized unit, or an exit — and that conversation is stronger before you have taken on debt, not after.

A working capital loan or a cash advance, underwritten on your last three to six months of deposits. Decision in about a day, funding in one to three business days — fast enough to meet a landlord's deadline if you apply the day you get the letter, not the day before it expires.

Amounts run half to one and a half times a month's deposits. Borrow the arrears plus one month forward, so you are not applying again in thirty days, and no more. Funders ask what the money is for; back rent is a common answer and not a negative one on its own. Two advances in six months for the same reason is.

Ask for weekly payments and get the total repayment in dollars before you sign. A landlord's deadline is where people take the first offer, and the first offer is rarely the best one.

A one-page letter: the arrears figure, the date it will be paid, confirmation that current rent will be paid on the first from then on, and a sentence on what caused the gap and why it is closed. Landlords keep those letters. If you later need a month's grace, the tenant who sent one gets it; the tenant who went quiet does not.