A small business owner in Columbia is losing his convenience store at the end of this month.
Jonas Nlome owned the Quick Stop and Go on Wilson Road. He leased the space and last month the owner decided to sell the building.
"That's when I started looking for a loan. They told me it would be really, really impossible to get a loan at that time, especially for this kind of business,” Nlome said.
He thought he was a desirable loan candidate since he ran the business for five years, owns a home and has a credit score of 769.
Despite having good credit, Nlome couldn’t get a loan.
Financial experts say because of the credit crisis, banks are not lending money as freely as they used to.
"They worry about acquiring more bad debt, so they're starting to scrutinize the credit a lot more,” Kevin Rasberry with the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America said.
Without money to buy the building, Nlome is forced to pack up and close down next week. Nlome hopes credit markets free up soon so he can get a loan to start over again.
Nlome says the store will still be there, because the new owner will run it.
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