The first question is always "affiliated or unaffiliated?". That shifts "risk" one way or another.If affiliated, then the question is still: Who is running it? Motels, for example, are a favorite operating investment of immigrants (many of them named Patel), and as individuals they tend to own one or two such businesses only. If there is an affiliation, it is usually one to small reservation networks and may not serve the purpose of strong network marketing which could boost underwriter confidence.Those smaller entities are of course the most challenging, mostly because the owners usually keep their own books, which is almost universally a disqualifier for loan/credit based organizations unless the tax returns show healthy profits. Predictably, that is rarely the case. Thus the request for "audited" or cpa-prepared statements for a true picture of the business.For larger chain-affiliations, like a Ramada for example, there is generally a slightly higher propensity for cpa-prepared books, but the thin margins of the business itself is usually what creates the challenge in making funders feel at ease.To recap: if going for a credit-based mechanism (see this post on the matter of "lien and security"), ask the simple question: Do you have cpa-prepared financials? If not, tell me what you showed (profit/loss) on your last 3 tax filings. That will save all of us (incl. the client) a lot of time.Alternatively, and per the referenced article above, C-PACE may be an excellent choice. Some of these operations have been family-owned for over a decade, and there could be nice equity available to leverage which the bank holding the mortgage would only be too happy to support to raise their portfolio value. So a good set of questions to ask the client is: how much did you buy this property for, and how much do you still have to pay on it? then, how much do you believe it is worth today? Now, the minimum project size that the demanding PACE process is worth going after is $250,000. Below that, there are too many fees and too much required time and work to make it pay off for everyone. Mind you, there are very few national C-PACE funders doing projects that small anyway.