The eleven documents a lender asks for after the term sheet

A term sheet is not financing. It is a statement of the terms a lender is willing to discuss if the project turns out to be what the summary said it was. Everything after that point is verification, and verification runs on documents rather than conversation.

The specific list varies by lender, asset type and loan structure. The categories do not. What follows is the request pattern to prepare for, with the question each category actually answers.

1. Entity and authority records

Formation documents, the operating or partnership agreement, the current ownership table, and evidence of who is authorised to sign. The question is not whether your entity exists. It is whether the person signing can bind it, and whether anyone else's consent is required first.

2. Documented site control

Deed, purchase contract, option, ground lease or assignment — including every amendment and each extension. Verbal control is not control. If the contract has a closing deadline, the lender will read it against their own approval calendar.

3. Title commitment and survey

A current commitment with the exception documents, and a survey prepared to a recognised standard. Easements, setbacks, encroachments and access rights are where a site plan quietly loses units.

4. Environmental and geotechnical reports

The environmental site assessment and the geotechnical report, current rather than inherited from a prior owner. Subsurface conditions and recognised environmental conditions change both cost and lender appetite.

5. The approval and utility record

Zoning confirmation, plat status, permits issued or pending, and written utility capacity for water, wastewater and power — including who pays to extend service. This is the category owners most often assume rather than document.

6. Drawings and specifications

The current set at its real stage of completeness, with the stage stated honestly. A budget built on a 50% set is a different instrument from a budget built on permit drawings, and a lender will price the difference.

7. Budget with sources and uses

A full development budget, the sources and uses, the contingency and its basis, and the interest reserve. Every line should be traceable to a quote, a contract, a published fee schedule or a stated assumption.

8. Contract and schedule

The construction contract or its current draft, the delivery method, and a schedule with real logic rather than a bar chart with even durations. Lenders read the schedule against the loan term, not against your optimism.

9. Valuation and market file

The appraisal will be ordered by the lender, but your own rent or sales comparables, absorption assumptions and market evidence should be assembled and internally consistent with the pro forma.

10. Sponsor financial and experience records

Personal or entity financial statements, schedule of real estate owned, liquidity evidence, and a factual record of comparable work — attributed to the person who performed it and the entity through which it was performed.

11. Insurance and bonding file

Builder's risk and liability coverage, the certificates, any bonding requirement and the contractor's capacity to meet it. This category arrives late in diligence and delays closings more often than it should.

How to read your own answer

Assemble the list and mark each category as held, partial or missing. Two or three partials are normal and are usually resolved inside diligence. Five or more, or any missing category among site control, approvals, utilities or authority, is a signal to pause. The cost of a two-week delay is small. The cost of a failed diligence process is a repriced deal, a lost deposit, or a lender who will not look at your next project the same way.

Illustration only, not a Threefold engagement: a sponsor holds a signed contract, a budget and a schedule, but the utility capacity letter is eighteen months old and the extension cost was never assigned. That single unresolved line is capable of moving a budget by more than the contingency it was built with.