Daniel
Commercial fitout business, Joondalup
The Situation
Daniel runs a commercial fitout business in Joondalup with twelve employees. He'd just won a tender to fit out three new dental practices for a private hospital group — total contract value around $1.6 million across nine months. To start the job, he needed working capital for materials, mobilising staff, and locking in subcontractors. Required: $480,000. His main bank had banked him for six years and turned him down inside a week — the recent jump in turnover from winning bigger contracts was flagged as "volatility".
What We Did
Daniel had around $740,000 of usable equity in his Joondalup home. We had a 20-minute call on Monday afternoon. By Friday we'd matched the deal to a private lender we knew was actively pricing trade business deals secured against family-home equity, structured a 12-month interest-only facility at 9.5% with a 2.5% establishment fee, and settled it the following Wednesday. The contract started on schedule. By month seven Daniel was running cash-positive on the new contract and had won two more. We refinanced the private loan into a standard commercial facility at month 11. Total cost across the 11 months landed around $52,000 — the contracts that wouldn't have happened without that finance: significantly more.