Construction Underway

Once construction starts, a project stops being a plan and becomes a ledger: draws in, work out, and a monthly verdict on whether the two still balance. Most projects that end badly had no catastrophe, just manageable problems managed late. The discipline of this stage is running the honest arithmetic every month and acting while options are still plural.

Files here run across the platform's range, most between $3 million and $15 million, the most heavily weighted part of the $3 million to $25 million core transaction range.

What defines this stage

The facility is funding against inspected work: pay applications, lien waivers, inspections, disbursements, repeated to completion. Three ledgers move at once: budget against actual costs, schedule against calendar, loan availability against work remaining. The stage ends at completion and certificate of occupancy, handing off to lease-up and stabilization or to sales; everything between is management, visible month by month in the draw file.

The capital questions at this stage

The recurring question is cost-to-complete: what every remaining dollar of work costs, measured against remaining availability plus contingency. Around it: how change orders are priced, approved, and funded, the budget's slowest leak. Whether the interest reserve is pacing with the draw curve, and whether contingency is covering genuine surprises or quietly absorbing scope. And, when the arithmetic turns, what the capital event actually is (reallocation, sponsor top-up, facility increase, or restructure), because naming it correctly, early, determines how expensive it becomes.

Programs and paths that fit this stage

A healthy file's needs are administrative: draws funding on time against clean paperwork. Where the project has outgrown its loan, construction completion financing restructures the remaining work honestly. Where the lender has slowed or stopped advancing, the lender stopped funding draws page maps the diagnosis and the realistic paths. And as completion approaches, the handoff, often construction-to-bridge financing, should already be in motion; the best time to arrange the next facility is while the current one performs.

What to prepare before completion and lease-up

Completion is a handoff that rewards preparation begun mid-construction: the leasing or sales operation marketing before final inspections, the certificate-of-occupancy sequence mapped, closeout documentation (warranties, unconditional lien waivers, as-builts) collected as trades finish, and the next facility's underwriting file assembled. A clean draw history is a credential; sponsors who kept one walk into the bridge conversation with credibility pre-verified.

Where files get difficult at this stage

The patterns repeat across cycles. Contingency spent in the first half on scope, leaving the second half unprotected. Change orders worked on handshakes and papered later, until the budget and the building disagree. Draw paperwork drifting out of sync with the work, so funding slows and subcontractors requeue the job.

Mechanics liens filed mid-project, freezing advances until resolved. Maturity dates approaching while completion recedes. None of these is fatal early; the projects in real trouble are the ones where the monthly arithmetic stopped being honest.