Which funding products does this apply to?

Term Loan, Business Line of Credit, Equipment Financing, Asset-Based Lending. Each has its own page listing the funders in this directory that offer it and what each one publishes about its terms.

Is this specific to construction?

It is written around how a construction business actually generates and collects cash, which is what makes its funding problem different. The mechanics transfer; the arithmetic may not.

The Find Me Funders research desk. Some drafting is AI-assisted, and every page that is says so at the top, including whether a person has checked its claims yet.

How do I know a figure here is right?

Where a page carries the green notice, its claims were checked against the sources listed at the end and a reviewer is named. Where it carries the amber one, nobody has verified it yet and you should confirm anything you plan to act on.

Are the examples real deals?

No. Every worked example is labelled illustrative and exists to show the arithmetic. What any particular lender charges is on that lender's page, where it publishes it.

Why do you never say what a typical rate is?

Because we cannot source it. A market average assembled from lenders who do not publish prices is a guess with a decimal point on it. Where a lender publishes a figure, we show that figure and say where it came from.

Is this financial or legal advice?

No. It is general information about how these products work. Outcomes depend on your contract and your state, and a lawyer or accountant licensed where you are is the person to ask about your situation.

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One lender for everything or a facility for each job

Consolidating puts every facility under one set of covenants and one cross-default. Splitting keeps failures local and makes every later lender junior to somebody.

By Find Me Funders research desk Updated 14 September 2026 923 words 4 min read

Drafted with AI assistance. Not yet independently checked. Nobody has verified the claims on this page against a source, so treat the figures and legal points as a starting point rather than as settled, and confirm anything you are about to act on. How we check things.

Put everything with one lender and your facilities fail together: a breach on any one triggers cross-default across all of them, and a single blanket filing covers every asset. Split them across specialists and a problem stays where it started — but each new lender arrives behind an existing filing, and no single party has enough at stake to be flexible when you need an amendment.

That is the trade. It is not about price, though price is where every conversation starts, and price generally favours splitting.

Where separate facilities win on cost

Illustrative only —$400,000 of need across three jobs: $180,000 of equipment, a $120,000 working capital line, and $100,000 for a build-out.

One blanket relationship: $400,000 over sixty months at 9.5%. Payment $8,400.74, total interest $104,045. Every dollar priced at the same rate, and every dollar outstanding for the full sixty months whether you need it or not.
Three purpose-matched facilities: equipment on a purchase-money loan at 8.25% over sixty months ($40,280 of interest); a line at 10.5% drawn about 40% of the year ($5,040 a year, $25,200 over five); a term loan at 11% over forty-eight months ($24,059). Total $89,538.

Splitting saves $14,507, and most of that comes from two structural facts: the equipment is priced against its own collateral, and the line only charges for the days you are drawn. A single facility charges the same rate on everything and charges it continuously.

Where one lender wins

Illustrative only —the same business, eighteen months later, in a bad quarter. Coverage drops below the covenant. You need a waiver.

With one lender: one conversation, one credit committee, one amendment. It may cost a fee and a tighter covenant, but it exists as a path.

With three: the line provider sees the breach and freezes availability. The equipment lender wants to know what the others are doing. Nobody will move without the others, and there is no intercreditor agreement because nobody thought they needed one.

Price the freeze. If the $120,000 line is unavailable for ninety days and you replace that working capital with an advance at a 1.30 factor, the cost is $36,000 — more than twice the $14,507 the split arrangement saved you over five years. One waiver, granted once, pays for the entire price premium of consolidating.

The variable that flips it: whether you expect to need an amendment.Stable, seasonal, predictable, covenant headroom to spare — split, and take the cheaper purpose-matched pricing. Volatile, growing fast, thin coverage, or in an industry where one customer can move your numbers — consolidate, and buy the flexibility.

What the split actually costs in the file

Beyond price, splitting has three specific frictions worth naming.

Lien position.Each new lender searches and finds the last one. The second and third lenders price their lien position, or ask for a subordination the first will not give. The equipment funder is usually fine, because purchase-money filings are narrow. A second general lender usually is not.

Reporting.Three facilities means three sets of covenants, three reporting calendars, three definitions of EBITDA that do not agree. It is a real administrative cost and it is where technical defaults come from.

Nobody owns the relationship.When each lender holds a small slice, none of them has enough exposure to fight for you. The lender with $400,000 outstanding has a reason to keep you alive. The one with $100,000 has a reason to get out first.

What the consolidation actually costs

One covenant set applied to everything.The tightest test in the package governs all of it.

Cross-default.A breach on the smallest facility accelerates the largest. Ask for cross-default to be limited to payment defaults above a materiality threshold. Sometimes you get it.

A blanket filing.Every asset encumbered, which forecloses purpose-matched financing later. If you consolidate, ask now for a written carve-out permitting purchase-money equipment filings — it costs the lender almost nothing and is very hard to obtain later.

The questions that settle it

How much covenant headroom do I have today? If a 15% revenue decline would breach a covenant, you are buying flexibility, not price.
What will I need to finance in the next two years? If the answer includes equipment or receivables, keep those collateral pools clean.
Will the consolidating lender carve out purchase-money filings? Ask before you sign. The answer determines whether consolidation closes future doors.
Is the cross-default limited or total? Read it. "Any default under any agreement with any affiliate" is a much bigger sentence than it looks.

What to ask for, and what to refuse

Ask any prospective single lender three things in writing: the covenant package, the cross-default wording, and whether purchase-money equipment filings are permitted. Ask when it last granted a waiver and who approves one.

Ask each specialist lender what its position requirements are and whether it will sign an intercreditor agreement with the others. If none of them will, you are building an arrangement that cannot be renegotiated.

Keep a current debt schedule either way — with three facilities it is not optional, and every lender will ask for it.

Refuse a consolidation sold purely on convenience; one payment is worth something, but not $14,507. Refuse an unlimited cross-default if you can negotiate a threshold. And refuse to split facilities across lenders who have not been told about each other — the discovery happens in the UCC search anyway, and arriving as a surprise is the expensive version.

Where this applies