The $1.7M Gap That Almost Slipped Through the Cracks Dinner was at Chops in Atlanta. White tablecloths. Dry-aged steaks. Developer in a $5K suit, Rolex flashing every time he lifted his wine. He was pitching a $40M ground-up multifamily in Charlotte. Needed $10M in equity. Handed me a glossy prospectus—polished enough to impress someone who doesn’t ask questions. The next morning, I opened the model. On the surface, it passed the sniff test: – Seemed like reasonable construction numbers – Contingency looked light, but not crazy So far, nothing unusual. But then I rebuilt the cash flow. And there it was: a $1.7M shortfall sitting mid-year. Not in the annual totals—but buried in the monthly burn. It was caused by the typical trap: smoothing lease-up, interest, and operating costs into a 12-month number, instead of modeling the actual cash curve. But that hole is real. Someone funds that. Equity or debt. If you don’t plan for it, you get the worst kind of call: “We’re short. Do we pause construction? Take mezz? Get a bridge loan at junk terms?” I’ve seen that movie. It's expensive. When I flagged it, the developer shrugged: “Yeah, it’s there—but it’s temporary. Not a big deal.” It is a big deal. Because temporary or not, you still need liquidity to survive it. We walked.