The commercial terms · Lender Draws
A Rejected Draw Costs a Month
Your lender is a stakeholder in the program whether or not anyone treats them as one. A draw that gets rejected costs you a month of carry.
Bring the site, the unit count and the drawings at whatever stage. You get a range, the drivers, and an honest read on the pro forma.
Self-perform
Dewatering, SOE and deep foundations in house
Licensed
General contractor, licensed in the state of Florida
GMP
Open book, with the contingency visible to you
Draws
Documentation your lender can actually process
Draws fail for boring, avoidable reasons
Missing lien waivers, stored materials undocumented, percentage complete that does not reconcile to the schedule of values, or a change order not yet approved. None of these is complicated and all of them stop the draw, and the cost lands on the developer as carry rather than on the contractor.
The cost of a rejected draw also lands asymmetrically. The contractor is paid a month later; the developer carries a month of interest on the whole facility and may have to fund the gap from equity. That asymmetry is why draw quality is worth treating as a schedule item rather than an administrative one.
What a clean draw needs
- Lien waivers current from every tier, not just the subs you remember.
- Stored materials documented, insured and inspectable.
- Percentages that reconcile to the schedule of values.
- Change orders approved before they appear in a draw.
- Photographs and inspection reports the lender will accept.
Building the process around your lender
Every lender has requirements and a history of what they have rejected. Ask yours for the rejection reasons from their last few deals before the first draw is prepared, and build the process to answer them specifically.
It is one email, it takes a week to get a reply, and it is worth more than any generic checklist because it addresses the actual institution that will be reviewing your submissions.
How we handle it
- 01Build draw packages to your lender's actual requirements.
- 02Track lien waivers continuously rather than at draw time.
- 03Document stored materials properly, including off site.
- 04Reconcile the schedule of values monthly.
- 05Respond to lender inspector queries quickly.
Ask your lender for their rejection reasons from the last three deals. It takes one email and it tells you exactly what to build the process around, which is far more useful than any generic checklist.
FAQ
Common questions
- Why do draws get rejected?
- Lien waivers, stored materials and reconciliation. Almost always boring and almost always avoidable.
- Who pays for the delay?
- The developer, as carry. Which is why we treat draw quality as a schedule item.
- Can materials be stored off site?
- Usually, with proper documentation and insurance. Confirm your lender's requirements early.
- How often are draws?
- Typically monthly. The cadence matters less than the package being right first time.
What we build
Garden Apartments
Two to three story wood frame with surface parking. The cheapest way to build a unit in Florida, and it only works where land is cheap enough to spread out.
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Wrap & Texas Donut
Residential wrapped around a freestanding parking structure. More density than garden without the cost of building over the parking.
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Podium
Concrete parking and ground-floor uses below, wood-framed residential above. The workhorse of urban multifamily, and the typology where Florida ground conditions bite hardest.
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Mid-Rise Concrete
Cast-in-place or precast concrete throughout. More expensive per square foot than wood and often the right answer anyway — particularly near the water.
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Mixed-Use
Ground-floor commercial with residential above. Structurally one building, operationally two, and the complexity lives in the seam between them.
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Adaptive Reuse
Office, hotel or warehouse converted to residential. Occasionally excellent value and frequently more expensive than building new, and the difference is decided by the existing structure.
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More the commercial terms
GMP & Contract Structure
A guaranteed maximum price is the standard structure for multifamily, and how it is assembled matters more than the number on the front.
Read more →
Contingency
Contingency is not padding and it is not free money. It is a bounded provision for things nobody could reasonably have known, and it should be governed as such.
Read more →
Schedule Risk
On a multifamily deal a month of delay costs carry plus a month of deferred lease-up, and that combination is usually larger than any construction saving anyone negotiated.
Read more →
Next step
Find out what is actually wrong with it.
An inspection, photographs of what we found, and a written scope. If the honest answer is that it can wait another season, that is the answer you will get.