One kind of borrowed money can fund your down payment. The rules say which, and how.

A personal loan counts in full, if the payments come from outside the business

Here is the exception buyers keep missing, often because someone told them flatly that borrowed money never counts.

A personal loan to you as a guarantor counts toward the injection without a cap, on one condition: you can show that the loan payments come from a source other than the business's cash flow. A spouse's salary.

Your own continuing outside income. Investment income.

Anything real and documentable, as long as it is not the business you are buying paying you a salary that then services the loan, because that is the business funding its own down payment with extra steps, and underwriters are paid to notice.

This is also the honest answer to the home equity question. A loan against your house is a personal loan to you, not money borrowed against the business or the deal, so it can fund the injection.

It faces the same repayment-source test as any other personal loan, and it deserves the same sober second look you would give any decision that puts your home behind a business purchase. The rule makes it possible.

Whether it is wise is a judgment about your own risk, and it belongs in daylight, not in a closing-week scramble.

Whichever personal loan you use, build the file before you are asked for it: the loan agreement, the account trail showing where the money landed, and the pay stubs or statements proving the outside income that services it. Sourcing problems are rarely about the money being wrong. They are about the paper arriving late.

Which rulebook governs your loan, and what tightens October 1

The SBA's lending rulebook is mid-handover, and the date that decides which version applies to you is set.

SOP 50 10 8 governs applications submitted through September 30, 2026. SOP 50 10 8.1 applies to applications received by SBA on or after October 1, 2026, and its purchase-lending rules live in its Appendix 15. If your deal is in flight across the boundary, ask your lender which side your file lands on rather than assuming.

For the injection itself, the structure described on this page carries across the handover: 10% of the total project, the capped group capped at half, full standby meaning the whole term.

The change a buyer actually feels sits next to the injection, in coverage.

For a first-time purchase, applications received by SBA on or after October 1, 2026 must show 1.25x debt service coverage, normally on the last fiscal year or a two-year historical average, the SBA's own floor, where most lenders already were.

Ordinary acquisition underwriting relies on historical earnings. Appendix 15 permits a conditional projections route for a qualifying owner-occupied Special Purpose Property with full appraisal collateralization and documented two-year coverage requirements; see the coverage guide before assuming that exception applies.

Put together, the two rules point the same direction: the deal has to hold up on documented reality, both where the down payment came from and what the business already earns. Buyers who assemble that evidence before underwriting asks are not lucky. They are early.