A closing rarely dies in one dramatic moment. It comes apart in small increments.
An appraisal comes in light. A condition is added late. An employment letter reads differently than the application suggested. A lender changes its position, and the file is repriced.
Each of those may be survivable on its own. Stacked into the final two weeks before closing, they can compound quickly.
What turns a survivable problem into a collapsed deal is usually time. Starting over with a new lender in the few days that are left can be very difficult.
Sometimes none of this happens on your client’s file at all. It happens to the buyers on the other side of the sale, and your client is left without the funds to close.
Here is what that looked like on a real file: a private bridge loan in Toronto that closed in May 2025.
A client we will call Leslie had a firm sale on one Toronto property and a purchase of another, both set to close on the same day. Leslie was counting on the sale proceeds to complete the purchase.
The buyers could not obtain their financing, and the sale collapsed. Without those proceeds, the purchase could not close.
Tembo funded within 36 hours: a blanket first mortgage across both properties for the full purchase price, about $650,000 at 43% loan to value, with four months of interest prepaid.
The purchase closed. Leslie sold the existing home the following month and repaid Tembo in full.
The number worth noticing is the 43%. This was never a leverage problem. It was a timing problem: plenty of equity across two properties and, for a short time, no practical way to reach it.
Leslie was house rich, cash poor at exactly the wrong moment.
A bridge can sometimes be arranged in days when a new purchase mortgage may take weeks. The difference is usually not effort. The two loans are answering different questions.
A purchase mortgage generally asks whether the client can carry a payment for years, which can mean income, ratios, employment history and a full picture of the household.
A bridge asks something much narrower. Is there equity in the property, and is there a defined event that repays the loan?
On many bridge files, both answers are already sitting in documents the broker is holding. Fewer questions can mean a faster decision.
That is how Tembo underwrites. We have no GDS or TDS requirements and No Minimum Credit Score. Approval rests on the equity in the property and on whether the exit makes sense.
Every application should begin with the exit. On a bridge, the exit is often easy to name: the sale of the existing home. If it is your client’s own purchase financing that fell apart, private purchase financing may help the deal close, with a bank refinance as the planned exit once the profile supports it.
It can also help that Tembo is a direct lender. We lend our own money and make our own decisions, and brokers do not need Form 1s to submit.
A file that looks lost at the lawyer’s office often had three earlier chances to be saved. Recognizing them is much of the skill.
A file that was moving and then stops is often a signal rather than a lull. The silence may come from your client’s own lender, or you may hear from your client’s Realtor that the buyers’ financing has gone quiet.
If that silence starts two weeks before closing, a parallel conversation with Tembo may leave room to plan the bridge properly. If you wait for a formal decline, the same file may have only a few days left.
A short call can put a backup plan in place without alarming the client:
“Your sale may still close as planned, but the buyers’ financing has gone quiet and I would rather not wait to find out why. I would like to line up a backup plan today so your purchase can still close if the sale does not. If everything goes through, we will not need it.”
There may be more room here than it feels like, because a bridge does not need the full process a purchase mortgage needs.
Brokers can receive initial deal feedback in as little as one hour. On a complete and workable submission, a commitment may be available in approximately four business hours. In urgent situations, Tembo can often fund within 48 hours of receiving a complete application and satisfying all funding conditions.
Depending on the application, a decline on a Tuesday may still leave room for a closing on Friday.
This is the tightest of the three, and it is not automatically fatal. A rescue at this stage tends to work best when someone has already made the call and the file is already with an underwriter, rather than arriving cold on closing day.
The shortfall could be the whole purchase price or a smaller gap left by a reduced advance. The questions stay the same: how much equity is there, and what repays the loan?
Speed matters on these files, but planning time can matter even more.
If you have a hunch that a client may need bridge financing, call us early, even before anything has gone wrong. A very short bridge requested at the last minute can be difficult to structure within the legal limits on the cost of borrowing. A file planned a week or two out usually has more options.
Those options may include prepaid or partially prepaid interest, an open term, lump-sum paydowns or a blanket mortgage that includes more than one property.
Speed on these files is a process rather than a promise. A rush bridge mortgage generally moves best when everything arrives in one package:
What slows a file down is a Friday afternoon submission for a Tuesday closing, with a value nobody has supported.
In some lower loan-to-value cases, an appraisal may not be required. There are no set-up fees, and the lender fee, broker fee and discharge fee are disclosed up front.
Realtors are often among the first to hear that a buyer’s financing is in trouble.
If that happens, you are welcome to call Tembo directly. We will gather the basics, may help the homeowner directly and will bring in a mortgage broker when the file needs one.
The earlier we hear about it, the more options there may be.
Saving a closing that nearly collapsed may be one of the most memorable things a broker can do for a client and for the Realtors on both sides. Very few people forget who kept the deal alive.
That is also why these files are worth sending even when the odds look poor. A quick answer, even a no, may cost you an hour. A collapsed closing can cost far more, and it could cost your client the home they were planning to move into.
Got a closing that is coming apart? Call Tembo Financial at 416-238-6717 or visit www.tembofinancial.com. Realtors are welcome to call us directly.
Client names and identifying details have been changed. The examples in this article are provided for illustration and do not represent a guaranteed approval, timeline or funding outcome.
All applications are subject to Tembo Financial’s underwriting criteria, satisfactory documentation, property review, available equity and fulfillment of all funding conditions.