Ten days on a close cost money twice: once in carry, which is small and easy to count, and once in deals lost to whoever answered first, which is large and never reported. The days you can take back are the analysis days. The rest belong to third parties.
Updated 26 October 2026. A brief for principals, heads of acquisitions and lenders: the people who set how fast the firm answers.
Key takeaways
- On a stated $10,000,000 purchase at a 6.5% cap rate, ten days of income is about $17,808.
- On a stated $10,000,000 bridge loan refinanced from 9% to 7%, ten days of extra interest is about $5,479.
- The larger cost is the deal that goes to a faster buyer or lender: $3,200,000 of profit on the stated example in our screening brief.
- Most days in a close are third-party work: reports, title, the lender's process, legal. Software does not shorten them.
- The analysis days can be taken back. On our engine, an underwriting took a median of about 58 minutes over the 30 days to 18 October 2026.
The small cost: ten days of carry
Carry is the part everyone can compute, so it is the part that gets discussed. Two stated examples, with the arithmetic shown so you can swap in your own figures. These are inputs, not market statistics.
| Example | Per day | Ten days | Arithmetic |
|---|---|---|---|
| $10,000,000 purchase at a 6.5% cap rate: income that arrives later | about $1,781 | about $17,808 | $10,000,000 × 0.065 ÷ 365 |
| $10,000,000 bridge loan at 9% replaced by a loan at 7%: extra interest | about $548 | about $5,479 | $10,000,000 × 0.02 ÷ 365 |
| Same purchase, 30 days late | about $1,781 | about $53,425 | Thirty days of the first line |
On a deal of this size, ten days of carry is real money but rarely the reason a principal loses sleep. The reason is the second cost.
The large cost: the deal that went to someone faster
A seller with two credible offers takes the one with fewer open questions, and a borrower with two term sheets signs the first one that sized the loan correctly. A slow answer does not lose ten days of income. It loses the deal.
Our brief on screening days and missed deals works one stated example: a $10,000,000 purchase with $4,000,000 of equity and an assumed 1.8x equity multiple over five years carries $3,200,000 of profit. Against that, ten days of carry is about half a percent. For a lender, what a slow loan quote costs does the same sum: a 1% fee on that loan is $100,000 that goes to the lender who quoted first.
Where the days in a close actually go
Not every day can be taken back. The table separates the days that are analysis, where your own team is the clock, from the days that belong to someone else.
| Stage | Whose clock | Can software shorten it? |
|---|---|---|
| Read the package: offering memo, rent roll, T-12 | Your team | Yes |
| Tie the rent roll to the T-12 and the leases | Your team | Yes |
| Property record, owner of record, comps, market rent | Your team | Yes |
| Model and memo for the committee | Your team | Yes, to a first draft |
| Committee meeting | Your calendar | Only by arriving with a finished memo |
| Appraisal, environmental and property condition reports | Third parties | No |
| Title, survey, legal documents | Third parties | No |
| Lender credit process, if you are borrowing | The lender | Only by sending a complete package |
The first four rows are where an acquisitions or credit team usually spends its own days, and where a deal waits in a queue behind other deals. Deal team capacity shows how to count that queue.
What we measured on the analysis days
These are run times on our engine, from request to delivered files, over the 30 days to 18 October 2026, counting every run that finished and was charged, ours and our clients' alike.
| Analysis step | Median, minutes | p90 (one run in ten is slower), minutes |
|---|---|---|
| Underwriting: memo and live Excel model | about 58 | about 95 |
| Value Opinion | about 45 | about 81 |
| Comps | about 19 | about 49 |
| Market rent | about 16 | about 41 |
That does not make a close take an hour. Reports, title and the lender still take their time. What changes is that the deal no longer waits for an analyst to free up before anyone knows whether it is worth the third-party spend. A deal emailed at 9 pm can have a first review in the same thread before the team is back at work.
What to ask your team
- For the last five deals you lost or passed on late, how many days passed between the package arriving and the first model?
- How many of those days were the deal waiting in a queue, rather than being worked?
- Which of the four analysis rows above took longest, and why?
- When a deal is lost, does anyone record that the other side answered first?
If the answer to question 2 is most of them, the cost of a slow close is a capacity problem, not a diligence problem. To see the analysis days on one of your own deals, book a demo.
Updated 26 October 2026. Written by the Titleman team with AI assistance. Run times: one query against production, 30 days to 18 October 2026. Carry and profit figures are stated examples with the arithmetic shown, not market statistics.
FAQ
What does a 10-day delay cost on a $10 million deal?
On a stated example at a 6.5% cap rate, $10,000,000 buys $650,000 of net operating income a year, which is about $1,781 a day, so ten days is about $17,808 of income that arrives later. These are stated inputs, not market figures; use your own price and cap rate.
What does a 10-day delay cost a borrower on a refinance?
On a stated $10,000,000 bridge loan at 9% being replaced by a loan at 7%, each day costs about $548 of extra interest, and ten days about $5,479. Arithmetic: $10,000,000 times 0.02 divided by 365, times ten.
Which days of a close can software shorten?
The analysis days: reading the package, tying the rent roll to the T-12, pulling comps and the property record, building the model and the memo. Third-party reports, title, the lender's own process, legal and the committee calendar are not analysis, and software does not shorten them.
How long does Titleman take for each part of the analysis?
Over the 30 days to 18 October 2026, the median underwriting took about 58 minutes, a Value Opinion about 45, comps about 19 and a market rent study about 16, from request to delivered files, on runs that finished and were charged.
Is the bigger cost of delay the carry or the lost deal?
Usually the lost deal. On the stated example in our screening brief, a $10,000,000 purchase with $4,000,000 of equity and an assumed 1.8x equity multiple carries $3,200,000 of profit. Ten days of carry is a rounding error next to it.