Underwriting before the offer
Every deal gets the same model: acquisition with land transfer tax in, renovation budget with a contingency you actually believe, monthly carrying costs multiplied by a realistic timeline, financing fees and interest, selling costs, and tax on the way out. The output is after-tax profit and the return on cash actually invested, stress-tested for a resale price five percent lower and a timeline two months longer. If the deal only works in the best case, the model says so while you can still walk away.
| What we pressure-test | Why it decides the deal |
|---|---|
| Exit price | Optimistic comparables are the most common way a flip dies |
| Budget and contingency | Allowances are not quotes; scope creep eats margin quietly |
| Cost of money | Bridge and private rates compound against every month of delay |
| Carrying burn | Interest, property tax, insurance and utilities bill while you wait |
| Taxes in and out | Land transfer tax going in, HST through the build, income tax on exit |
The after-tax line matters more for investors than almost any other client we serve, because the same gross profit can land as business income at 53.53% personally or 12.2% in a corporation. Underwriting that stops at gross margin is comparing deals in the wrong currency.
BRRRR deals get one extra test: the refinance appraisal. The strategy only recycles capital if the post-renovation appraisal supports pulling most of your cash back out, so we model the appraisal a lender's appraiser is likely to land on, not the one the pro forma wants, and show how much capital stays trapped if it comes in low.
Draw management lenders say yes to
Construction draws stall on paperwork, and every stalled draw means you are floating the trades yourself. We assemble each request the way a credit team reads it: a paid-invoice register, cost-to-date against the approved budget, cost-to-complete and the schedule position, so the reviewer's questions are answered before they are asked. Receipts live in Dext against each project, which means a site inspection and the paper file tell the same story. Founder Walla Assaf, CPA came out of banking and corporate finance before founding the firm, and it shows in how the packages read to a credit committee.
Where a facility requires CPA-prepared statements behind it, Compilation & Review Engagements cover that, and when the debt itself is the problem, Business Financing Advisory works on structure, term and lender fit rather than just accepting the first bridge quote.
Cash across overlapping projects
One project is a budget; three are a treasury problem. A rolling 13-week cash flow ties together draw timing, trade payment runs, carrying costs and expected closings, and shows the crunch weeks before they arrive. When a sale slips a month, and one always does, you can see which project absorbs the strain and whether the answer is resequencing trades, a short private-money bridge or delaying the next acquisition.
The discipline extends to the boring mechanics that sink timelines: HST refund timing on builder projects, instalment dates that land mid-renovation, and holding-cost burn on a listed property that is not moving. A weekly number beats a quarterly surprise.
Reporting that raises the next round
Capital comes back when reporting is clean. We maintain per-project profit statements, capital accounts for each joint venture and distributions reconciled to the JV agreement, so partners see exactly how their deal performed and fund the next one faster. The same discipline builds your lender file: a documented history of budget versus actual is the strongest argument for higher leverage and released guarantees on future projects.
Every completed project also gets a post-mortem. Where the budget missed, which trades ran over, how many weeks the listing sat: those numbers feed straight back into the underwriting model, so each deal is priced with the evidence of the last one. A monthly package ties it together with project dashboards, carrying-cost burn and the pipeline, short enough to read in ten minutes.
Fractional CFO engagements are scoped in writing after a free 15-minute discovery call and sized to your project count, from a GTA duplex flipper to a small infill developer running three sites. You get the deal discipline of an institutional shop without hiring one.
