394. The Deal Doesn't Make You Money. The Financing Does.

Get access to the full recordings of the Creative Capital Mastermind: https://crecentral.com/creative-capital-recordings

Your bank charges you 7%. Your equity investors are costing you 20%. Here's why that's not a mistake.

If that math surprised you, this session will change how you finance every deal you do from here on out.

This is the full recording of Capital Stack 101, one session from our most recent CRE Central Mastermind weekend in Nashville. I break down the four layers of financing in every commercial deal, why the "cheapest" money isn't always the smartest money, and why the order you stack it in decides your returns as much as the deal itself.

I've got a project right now where the capital stack has 10 different sources of capital in it. You'll probably never need that many, but you need to understand why each layer exists, because the day you get it wrong is the day a senior lender calls your note.

At the end of the session, I handed the room a real $3M deal that will not pencil with conventional financing and told them to fix it. Grab the same worksheet and work through it yourself. Link below.

What you'll learn:

The four layers, in order. Senior debt, mezzanine debt, preferred equity, common equity, and what each one actually costs.

What's really capping your leverage today. It's not loan-to-value anymore, it's DSCR, and it's quietly limiting deals to 60-65% even when the bank quotes 80%.

The mezz debt mistake that gets notes called. Why stacking undisclosed debt after closing violates almost every loan covenant out there.

Preferred equity vs. common equity. Where pref sits in the stack and why it counts toward your down payment without acting like debt.

Real numbers from the room. Actual interest rates, equity splits, and preferred returns operators are seeing right now.