Fix-and-Flip Financing: How to Close in 10 Days Without Your Bank

You found the deal. The numbers work. The seller wants 21 days to close. Your bank needs 60. You lose the deal.

This is the number one reason real estate investors walk away from profitable flips – not bad deals, not bad credit, not bad strategy. Slow capital.

The good news: you do not need your bank to fund a fix-and-flip. In fact, your bank is probably the worst tool for the job.

Why Banks Cannot Fund Fix-and-Flip Deals Fast

Traditional banks were designed to underwrite 30-year mortgages on primary residences. Their process – the income verification, the debt-to-income ratios, the multi-week appraisal queues – was built for a borrower who plans to live in the same house forever.

A fix-and-flip investor is not that borrower. You have irregular income, assets tied up in active deals, and a property that will not exist in its current form in 90 days. The bank’s formula does not have a column for any of that.

Private fix-and-flip lenders do. That is their entire business model.

How Fix-and-Flip Loans Actually Work

A private fix-and-flip loan (sometimes called a hard money loan or rehab loan) is designed for exactly this use case:

• Loan amount: typically covers purchase price plus rehab costs (up to 90% LTC on qualified deals)
• Term: 6-18 months – enough time to buy, rehab, and sell
• Qualification: based on the deal’s after-repair value (ARV), not just your tax return
• Speed: most private lenders can close in 10-14 business days when paperwork is clean

The underwriter is asking one question: does this deal make sense? If the property is undervalued and your rehab plan is realistic, the deal gets funded. Your W-2 is not the main event.

What Fix-and-Flip Lenders Actually Look For

Fix-and-flip lenders want to see three things:

1. Deal viability: purchase price vs ARV. What does the finished house sell for? What are you paying for it? Is there enough spread to cover the loan, the rehab, and leave you profit?
2. Experience or a credible plan: have you flipped before? If not, do you have a general contractor lined up? A solid rehab plan matters more than your credit score on most programs.
3. Skin in the game: most programs require you to bring some equity – typically 10-20% of the total deal cost. Pure 100% financing is rare and expensive.

Not 3 years of tax returns. Not a letter from your employer. Not a 6-week appraisal queue.

Can You Get a Fix-and-Flip Loan With Bad Credit?

In many cases, yes. Some programs fund investors with FICO scores below 620. The lender is underwriting the asset, not just you. If the deal has strong ARV and you have a solid rehab plan, credit is one factor among several – not a hard gate.

Funding is always subject to lender approval, and every deal is different. But credit challenges are rarely the automatic rejection they are at a traditional bank.

How to Apply at Slate Financial

At Slate Financial, we work with a network of private lenders who specialize in fix-and-flip, ground-up construction, DSCR rentals, and bridge loans. When you apply, we match your deal to the lenders most likely to fund it – so you get competitive options, not a single bank’s yes-or-no.

The application takes about 3 minutes. You’ll need the property address, estimated purchase price, estimated rehab budget, and expected ARV. We handle the lender matching.

Apply now: slatefinancial.io/apply/fix-and-flip – most investors hear back same day.

Speed Is the Competitive Advantage

The real estate investors who build portfolios are not the ones with the best credit. They are the ones who figured out how to access capital fast and deploy it before someone else does.

A $200K fix-and-flip that you close on in 12 days beats a $300K deal you lose because your bank needed 8 weeks. Speed is the competitive advantage.

If you have a deal under contract or a property you’re making an offer on, don’t wait for the bank. Apply at slatefinancial.io/apply/fix-and-flip and let us find you a lender who can actually close on your timeline.

Funding is subject to lender approval. All loan programs are subject to credit and collateral review. Results not typical.

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