Yieldi | How Developer Financing Challenges Led to Yieldi
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How Difficulty Getting a Development Loan Led to Yieldi

Eric Rhodes

October 8, 2026 · 8 min read

Yieldi started with a problem its founders experienced firsthand as real estate developers.

They had development experience. They had a strong balance sheet. They had the kind of background that should have made financing relatively straightforward.

Yet getting a development loan through a traditional lender was still difficult.

That experience raised a simple question: if established real estate operators with experience and financial strength were having this much trouble obtaining financing, how many other developers were dealing with the same problem?

In the accompanying video, Yieldi co-founder Joe Ashkouti explains how that realization led the founders to begin making real estate loans themselves, initially with their own capital and in markets they knew well. It eventually led to the development of the Yieldi investment platform and the company’s expansion beginning in 2019.

The Problem Started on the Borrower Side

Yieldi was not created by people looking at the lending industry from the outside.

Its founders were borrowers first.

They had experience developing real estate and understood what lenders generally wanted to see: a capable sponsor, financial strength, sufficient equity, a viable project, and a reasonable repayment strategy.

They believed they had those things.

The financing process was still difficult.

Development loans can be particularly challenging because the lender is financing a property that may not yet exist in its finished form. The project carries construction risk, cost risk, timing risk, and execution risk before it reaches stabilization.

Banks have legitimate reasons to evaluate those risks carefully. But from a developer’s perspective, a process that becomes unnecessarily slow or rigid can create problems of its own.

Real estate transactions continue moving while the financing is being reviewed.

Private Lender vs. Bank for Commercial Real Estate

A Difficult Process Revealed a Market Opportunity

The founders’ response was not simply frustration with one lender.

They recognized a larger market problem.

If obtaining capital was difficult for developers with experience and strong financials, there was likely a significant group of qualified real estate operators facing the same issue.

These borrowers did not necessarily need lenders to ignore risk.

They needed a financing process designed around how real estate transactions actually work.

That meant being able to evaluate a project quickly, understand the borrower’s experience, assess the collateral and business plan, and reach a decision without forcing every transaction into a standardized bank program.

There was an opportunity to make the lending process easier without making the underwriting less disciplined.

Why Bankable Borrowers Still Use Private Lenders

The Founders Started Lending Their Own Money

Rather than immediately building a large lending platform, Yieldi’s founders started small.

They began using their own capital to make loans on real estate projects in their local market.

That was a natural place to start.

They understood the neighborhoods.

They knew the development environment.

They could evaluate construction projects from the perspective of people who had actually developed real estate themselves.

A set of plans was not simply a theoretical business model. They understood what it took to turn those plans into a finished building.

That experience influenced the way the company approached lending from the beginning.

The question was not just whether a borrower checked enough boxes.

It was whether the project itself made sense.

How Yieldi Underwrites Real Estate Loans

Lending to Developers Requires Understanding Development

Construction and development loans are different from loans secured by stabilized properties.

The lender has to evaluate what exists today and what the borrower intends to create.

That may include reviewing:

  • the borrower’s development experience
  • land or property basis
  • construction budget
  • borrower equity
  • general contractor
  • project timeline
  • loan-to-cost
  • current and projected value
  • construction draws
  • market demand
  • the eventual refinance or sale strategy

What Private Lenders Look for in Construction Loans

A lender that has been on the developer side of the table can bring useful context to those decisions.

That does not mean approving every development project. Experience with development can just as easily make a lender more conservative because the team understands how frequently budgets, schedules, and assumptions change.

But it can make the conversation with the borrower considerably more practical.

The Goal Was an Easier Lending Process

One of the most important points in Joe’s story is that the opportunity was not simply to charge borrowers a different interest rate.

It was to create a better process.

Developers need clear answers.

If a lender cannot finance the project, the borrower benefits from knowing that quickly.

If the lender can finance it, the borrower needs to understand the proposed leverage, pricing, term, draw structure, and closing requirements.

Private lending can work particularly well when the decision makers are close to the transaction.

That structure allows the lender to evaluate the actual project rather than spending weeks moving information through multiple levels of approval before the borrower knows whether the deal is viable.

Then Came the Investor Side

The next stage of Yieldi developed almost by accident.

Joe describes speaking with a friend about what he was investing in and learning about an online platform that gave investors access to private investment opportunities.

That prompted another question.

Yieldi was already making real estate loans with its own money.

Could the company build a platform that would allow outside investors to participate in those same types of transactions?

Joe brought the idea to co-founder Josh Lloyd.

The lending operation already existed.

The next step was building the infrastructure around it.

That became the foundation for Yieldi’s investor platform.

How Yieldi’s Real Estate Debt Investment Platform Works

The Lending Business Came Before the Investment Platform

That sequence is important.

Yieldi did not begin by creating a website and then looking for loans to put on it.

The founders were already making loans.

They had experienced the problem as borrowers, identified an opportunity as lenders, and deployed their own capital into real estate transactions.

Only afterward did they begin building a way for outside investors to participate.

That distinction continues to shape the model today.

Yieldi operates first as a real estate lender.

The company sources borrowers, evaluates the transaction, structures the loan, closes it, and services it.

Eligible individual opportunities can then be made available to accredited investors.

Scaling Yieldi Beginning in 2019

Joe describes 2019 as the point when the company began to ramp up and scale the model.

What had started with loans funded from the founders’ own capital became a broader lending operation.

More borrowers meant more opportunities.

More investor capital allowed the company to finance a larger range of transactions.

And the platform made it possible to connect the two sides efficiently: real estate operators seeking capital and accredited investors looking for exposure to real estate-backed debt.

The technology made that connection easier, but the underlying business remained traditional private lending.

There is still a borrower.

There is still a property.

There is still underwriting.

There is still a loan that needs to be repaid.

Why the Origin Story Still Matters

A company’s origin does not guarantee the quality of future loans.

Every transaction still has to be underwritten on its own merits.

But Yieldi’s history helps explain why the company approaches lending the way it does.

The founders remember what it was like to sit on the borrower’s side of the table.

They understand that delays can cost a developer money.

They know that a strong project does not always fit neatly inside a bank’s lending program.

And they understand the practical realities behind construction budgets, timelines, draws, and exit strategies.

The goal is not to eliminate underwriting requirements.

It is to make the financing process more practical for qualified real estate operators.

Final Thoughts

Yieldi began because its founders encountered a lending problem themselves.

They were experienced real estate developers with a strong balance sheet, yet financing a development project through the traditional process was harder than they believed it should have been.

That experience revealed a broader opportunity.

There were other qualified developers who needed capital, and there was room in the market for a lender capable of evaluating those transactions through a faster, more practical process.

The founders began lending their own money on local projects.

Then they recognized that outside investors could participate in the same strategy.

The investment platform followed, and Yieldi began scaling the model in 2019.

What exists today grew out of that original borrower experience: real estate operators needed a better way to access capital, and the founders believed they could build it.

All loans are business-purpose loans and are subject to underwriting and approval. Borrower experience, financial strength, property value, and prior performance do not guarantee approval or future loan performance.

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