🧭 Why your deal got re-underwritten after the term sheet?

[Stevan Stojakovic]

🧭 You get the term sheet.
Rate works. Leverage looks good. Payments pencil.
You think the deal is basically approved.

Then a few weeks later, the lender retrades it or pulls the plug entirely.

This isn’t bad luck. It’s because the deal you thought was approved never actually was.

A term sheet is not an approval. It’s a conditional snapshot based on surface-level inputs: your stated rents, estimated expenses, rough value, and a standardized stress test. It’s meant to get the deal into the pipeline, not through the finish line.

Real underwriting starts after you sign.

📉 The appraisal comes in using trailing numbers and conservative comps.
📊 Rents get tested against market data and often get cut.
📁 Expenses get bumped up to lender minimums.
🏢 Insurance and taxes come in higher than expected.
📈 Rates or stress tests shift the debt service.

By the time credit committee sees the final picture, the math is very different from the original term sheet.

From the outside, it feels like the lender changed their mind.
In reality, they just finished the underwriting.

The mistake most investors make is modeling to “get a term sheet” instead of modeling to survive final underwriting. If your deal only works with optimistic rents, thin expenses, and zero cushion, it’s fragile.

🏗️ The investors who close consistently underwrite like credit does before the lender ever touches the file: conservative rents, lender-grade expenses, realistic taxes and insurance, and a DSCR buffer that can absorb bad news.

At Phoenix Funded, we stress-test deals the way credit teams actually do, so surprises happen early, not three weeks before closing.

💬 If you want us to look at your deal the same way a lender will, DM us “TERMSHEET” and we’ll tell you where it breaks.

Phoenix Funded
[email protected]
786-431-2532 | 305-439-5911