A development loan funds a project in two phases: finance to acquire the site, then a construction facility drawn down progressively as milestones are verified by a quantity surveyor. Interest is usually capitalised — added to the loan rather than paid monthly — and the facility is repaid at completion by settling sales, selling completed stock, or refinancing to a longer-term loan. Lenders assess the project’s feasibility and exit far more than your personal income.

Development lending is capped against two numbers: a percentage of your total development cost, and a lower percentage of the project’s gross realisation value. As a market guide that’s typically up to around 65–80% of cost and 65–70% of GRV, though the workable figure depends heavily on your lender, your presale coverage, and whether the deal takes on mezzanine funding to lift leverage.

Rather than a fixed deposit percentage, lenders look at your equity as the shortfall between what they’ll advance against cost and realisation and the total project cost. That equity can come from cash, existing property equity, or uplift already created in a site you bought well. Where equity is tight, mezzanine or second-mortgage funding can bridge part of the gap — at a higher cost the feasibility has to absorb.

True 100% finance is rare and, where it exists, usually combines senior debt with mezzanine or a joint-venture equity partner at a materially higher cost of capital. Most lenders want to see genuine developer equity so your interests align with theirs. We’ll tell you honestly whether a near-fully-funded structure is realistic for your project, or whether it quietly erodes the margin that makes the deal worth doing.

Not always. Bank construction facilities often require a level of qualifying presales to cover part of the debt, but there are lenders with reduced or no presale requirements — priced for the extra risk. Whether presale-light funding is worth the added cost depends on your project’s margin and how confident the exit is. That trade-off is exactly what we model before you commit.

A single lender can only offer its own appetite. A deal that’s presale-light, pre-DA, or reliant on a newer builder may be declined by one lender and cleanly approved by another — and you rarely know which without testing the panel. Our partners assessed these submissions inside the banks, so we frame the deal for credit approval and match it to the lender it fits, rather than sending you to apply and hope.