Your Lender Backed Out.
We Close Deals Like This Every Week.
Rescue financing for Knoxville real estate investors whose funding fell apart near the closing table. We lend our own capital — no broker, no capital partner, no committee above Chris and Flynt who can pull the plug three days out. Our fastest documented close is 24 hours. Roughly one in five loans we write each month is a deal somebody else was supposed to fund.
- Our own capital
- No tax returns or W-2s
- No full appraisal on most deals
- You talk to the decision makers
★★★★★ 30 five-star Google reviews · 300+ loans and $53M+ funded since 2021 · 65% repeat borrowers
Signs your deal is about to fall through
Your closing date moves once. Then it moves again. Nobody gives you a straight reason — because there isn't one they want to say out loud.
- Your loan officer stops returning calls or texts within a day
- New paperwork gets requested after underwriting already cleared you
- The down payment requirement moves after you had terms in writing
- Fees appear or change between the quote and the closing table
- The closing date shifts more than once with no clear reason
- Your lender mentions their investor or capital partner "needs more time"
- Title or escrow tells you they still have no wire commitment
It's almost always the same thing underneath. Some layer above your loan officer got nervous and pulled back, and your loan officer is either the last to know or the last to admit it. Chris calls the result being left at the closing table, and it's the phrase we hear from borrowers more than any other.
What's usually at stake is $5,000 to $10,000 of earnest money, a seller with no reason to extend, and a property that goes to the next buyer in line. Plus the part nobody puts a number on — looking unreliable in front of the agent, the seller, and the title company you'll need again on the next deal.
If you're seeing two or more of these and your closing date is inside two weeks, don't wait to see whether it resolves itself. It usually doesn't, and every day you wait removes an option we'd otherwise have.
Why these deals fall apart in the first place
Plenty of hard money lenders aren't lending their own money. They're packaging your deal and shopping it somewhere else. That works until it doesn't.
A broker-shopped structure
- Your file goes to a capital partner or committee elsewhere
- Someone you'll never speak to can decline it
- Terms can be repriced while you're under contract
- "One more document" is often a stall, not a requirement
- A mom-and-pop lender can simply run out of capital mid-deal
Approach Lending
- We lend from our own balance sheet
- Chris and Flynt approve it and fund it — same people
- No capital partner, no committee, nobody above them
- Commitment letter terms are closing table terms
- 300+ loans and $53M+ funded since 2021
That's the whole mechanism behind a rescue close. If your last lender's money source got cold feet, or the underwriter kept finding one more thing, you were looking at a brokered structure showing its weak point. A direct lender doesn't have that weak point, because there is nobody upstream left to spook.
So when you're calling around this week, ask one blunt question: is this your money, or somebody else's? The answer predicts almost everything about whether you close on time.
What to have ready when you call
A fast close is only as fast as the paperwork behind it. The 24-hour close happened because title, insurance, and documents were already in order — that's the precondition, not a promise.
- The purchase agreement and any signed addendums, especially ones touching your closing date
- Title commitment, or the title company's contact — including work already ordered by the lender who backed out
- Proof of insurance, or a quote in progress. If a policy is already bound, say so; it can take real time off the close
- A straight account of what your previous lender said and why they pulled out
- Property address, purchase price, rehab budget if there is one, and your exit
You don't need tax returns or W-2s. We're not asking you to prove income the way a bank would — we're asking for proof the deal is real and close to the finish line. On most deals there's no full appraisal either, which is where conventional timelines lose their weeks.
The borrowers who close fastest are the ones who call with title and insurance already lined up. If you're not sure whether what you have is enough, call anyway. Chris or Flynt will tell you what's missing in minutes, not days.
If the problem was leverage, not the lender
A common version of this: the deal didn't die on underwriting, it died when the down payment requirement moved and you couldn't cover the gap. If you hold equity in another property, cross-collateralizing it can carry total leverage as high as 100% — which is often what makes a rescued deal work at all. Institutional lenders selling on the secondary market can't do that. We can, because it's our money.
Inside a Knoxville closing
What actually has to happen between your call and funds on the table.
You call — and reach an owner
Not an intake form or a queue. Bring the property, the deadline, and where the last lender left off, and you'll know on that call whether this is fundable.
We evaluate the property ourselves
Our own comps, our own opinion of value, third-party evaluation from photos and video. No full appraisal on most deals, no committee, nobody above us to wait on.
Terms in writing, and they hold
Rate, points, leverage, and term. What's on the commitment letter is what you close at — the only exception being a situation materially different from what was represented.
Title clears and the deed of trust records
Your title company confirms clear title and records through the Knox County Register of Deeds. We add no layer on top of that — nothing has to be signed off after title clears.
Draws, if the loan carries rehab money
Finish a phase, walk it on video, funded the next business day. No inspector to schedule, no invoices, no lien releases.
We won't promise every closing happens in a day — that depends on title being clear and insurance being in place before you call. What we can tell you is that once those pieces are ready, nothing on our side is waiting on anyone else. Title companies tend to like closing with us for the same reason: we're responsive, and it makes their job easier on a compressed timeline.
Borrowers whose deals we picked up
All 30 of our Google reviews are five stars. These are the rescue ones.
"I've done several deals with Christopher Davis at Approach Lending... They really saved me on a deal that another lender dropped the ball on."
— Kevin Dyke"Approach is a top notch hard money lender who was able to make my deal work when my other lender couldn't."
— Matt Luffman"We had our deal funded and closed within a week."
— Dayna MonardezWhen you don't need a rescue close
Not every delay is an emergency, and we'd rather say so than sell you something.
- Your lender is still working, just slower than you'd like. An appraisal running long is frustrating. It isn't the same fire as funding getting pulled.
- You have three or more weeks before your deadline and no other warning signs.
- You qualify conventionally and aren't in a rush. Private money costs more month for month. That's worth it for speed and certainty on a short hold — not for a long one.
- You haven't signed a purchase agreement. Rescue closings are for deals already on fire, not deals that might catch one later.
- You'd rather put more cash in than use leverage, and you have it available.
If that's your situation, let your current lender finish the job and keep our number for the day it actually goes sideways. And if what you really need is a longer hold rather than a fast close, that's a different product — a 9-month bridge is the wrong shape for a multi-year plan.
Rescue closing questions
Deal falling apart? Call before the deadline, not after.
You'll reach Chris or Flynt directly. One conversation tells you whether we can fund it, what it costs, and how fast we can get to the table.
(865) 999-8083