Establishing a commercial mortgage relationship
We've been banking with Wells Fargo for over 10 years, they are OK. 
In terms of their real estate lending, they can be a bit inflexible, at best. They aren't approving loans because of a variety of complications: condo offices, insufficient tax returns. They have nothing to offer us for our single family business.

A few things about us. We are smallish family business. Been doing single family investing since 2008. Within our 2 main partnerships we have about $10,000,000 in single family's, mostly financed by either B2R, Firstkey, and Colony. These are spread out (CA, NC, FL, IL, MD, and more), but we have about $3mm free and clear awaiting a term sheet. We are still acquiring and financing more properties (hopefully the market of REOs doesn't dry up).

Last year we completed our first commercial deal, bought a 50% occupied REO office building (at a 6 CAP), currently 80% occupied. Bought for $1.26m, to be valued at about $2.3m when further occupied. We financed this with CUBS (https://www.cubsllc.com), with the help of a mortgage broker in the area. The problem is, the same mortgage broker cannot help us for deals outside of the Atlanta area.

We are planning to pursue our next commercial deal. Due to the nature that we look for properties (REOs researched online), the property can end up being in any state in the US.

In my opinion our financing is spread out, and we could potentially gain value by working with a direct lender who supports ALL of our activities nationwide.

What should our approach to commercial mortgages be. 
Do we start working with a mortgage broker who works nationwide? Or a large direct lender, like from this list (http://nreionline.com/research-amp-data/top-25-direct-lenders).

For us, it is important that our lender be capable of financing specific commercial deals either non-recourse, or at least based solely on the income of the collateral, rather than relying on our tax returns. They must lend in multiple states, and they should support deal sizes less than $1m.  Likely, we will end up doing deals across the board (multifamily, office, retail, industrial, including construction)

Are there commercial mortgage lenders that can offer attractive rates financing multiple single family homes.

Should we consider moving our deposit/checking banking with a commercial banker? 

We aren't doing much in terms of stock market investing, but that is something we are considering revisiting (especially after learning that you can 'easily' leverage into cash up to 50% of your stock portfolio at very low interest rates with Interactive Brokers, for example).
[{"id": "d66qdjc", "text": "I would love to hear what people use for this.  I can point you to a ton of SBA lenders, which will do you no good... some hard money guys... which also won't help... heck even life insurance guys may not work.\n\nFor some clients it seems a solid banking relationship helps (with a local credit union or small / mid-sized bank).  Other than that I have one guy in Arizona that I refer people to...\n\nDoes anyone rally have a go to list of folks that do small (sub $2m) commercial loans on reasonable terms (60%-70% LTV with a reasonable schedule)? ", "replies": [{"id": "d67en6r", "text": "I'd be curious to find out who your guy in AZ is. I do commercial in AZ and want to branch into MFH and SFH.", "replies": [], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "d6840ng", "text": "I don't know of many commercial lenders with non-recourse below $2mm. You may be able to go CMBS if it has a decent location", "replies": [{"id": "d6bq2ol", "text": "I've never heard of it making sense. All non recourse guys I've talked to need $2 million+. Also, those guys wouldn't touch single family homes. If you find a lender who will go non recourse on sub $1 million with attractive rates and even reasonable LTV, please let us know. ", "replies": [{"id": "d6cnuk8", "text": "Someone may go sub $1mm, but they won't give you a good rate as say $10mm because of their target profit and where there break even is at ", "replies": [], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "d6965s7", "text": "The easiest way (and please excuse the self-promotion) would be to have lenders compete for your business, regardless of location. By using the Raisal platform, you can enter in your loan details once and we will connect you with our network of CRE mortgage lenders that serve the area the property is located. From our dashboard, you can view and negotiate your terms with multiple lenders to find the best deal. \n\nYou can read a case study on how a Georgia investor used Raisal to finance a Florida property here: http://www.raisal.com/georgia_investor_purchases_florida_property_through_raisal\n\nYou can see how it works at: http://www.raisal.com/how-it-works\n", "replies": [{"id": "d6ccemh", "text": "man, I fucking hate self promoting posts on reddit... although I get they are now trying to monetize. ", "replies": [], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}]