Most investing content stops at the pitch. We would rather show the work. So instead of another explainer, here is one real loan, start to finish, with the borrower and address anonymized. It is an ordinary deal, which is exactly the point. Ordinary is what Charleston fix and flip financing looks like when it is done conservatively.

What Charleston fix and flip financing actually is

A fix-and-flip loan is short-term money used to buy and renovate a property that the borrower plans to sell. The lender funds the purchase and often part of the rehab, takes a mortgage on the property as collateral, and gets repaid when the house sells. The loan usually runs six to twelve months.

At 890 Capital, every one of these loans follows the same four rules: a first-position mortgage, a loan-to-value cap of 75%, Charleston tri-county property only, and a funded, credible exit before we lend a dollar. Those rules are what turn a category people think of as risky into something predictable. The loan below shows how they play out in practice.

The property and the borrower

The operator was a repeat borrower we had funded before, someone who buys tired houses in neighborhoods where a renovated home actually sells. This one was in Summerville: a dated single-family house on a street with comparable sales that supported the plan.

We do not lend on optimism. Before anything else, we asked the same question we ask on every file: if the plan goes sideways, does the property still cover the loan? Here it did. The purchase price plus a realistic renovation budget left room under the after-repair value, and the surrounding sales were recent and close, not cherry-picked from across town.

The structure

Here is the whole file, anonymized:

• Loan type: first-position bridge loan
• Amount: $310,000
• Loan-to-value: 68%
• Term: 6 months
• Collateral: the Summerville property, first lien
• Result: paid off on time

The two numbers that matter most are the position and the LTV. First position means that if the borrower had defaulted, we would have been first in line on the property, not standing behind a bank. The 68% loan-to-value means we lent well under the property's value. Our cap is 75%, and we came in below it on purpose. That gap between value and loan is the margin of safety. It is the cushion that absorbs a slow sale, a longer hold, or a market that cools while the work is underway.

The exit, funded before we lent

We do not fund a hope. Before we wired anything, we needed to see a credible way for the loan to be repaid. In this case it was a sale into a market we know block by block, at a price the recent comparable sales already supported. If the sale had stalled, the borrower had the reserves to carry the property and the option to refinance. No exit, no loan.

How it played out

The operator did the work on schedule. Over the six-month term, our investors earned their monthly distribution the entire way, paid on time by the 5th, as they are on every loan in the fund. When the house sold, the loan was repaid in full and the file closed. No extension, no drama, no loss.

That is the part people underestimate about Charleston fix and flip financing done this way. The individual deal is not exciting. It is a first-position loan on a real house in a market we understand, sized conservatively, with a clear way out. Multiply it across the book and the lack of drama becomes the entire value proposition.

Why one boring loan matters

We get asked how the fund has stayed at zero foreclosures since inception. The answer is not a single clever move. It is this loan, repeated. First-position collateral, a conservative LTV averaging around 66% across the book, property we can underwrite street by street, and a funded exit every time. When each loan is built the same disciplined way, the portfolio behaves the way the individual loans do: predictably.

The deals we turn down are part of the same story. When the equity cushion is thin, when the value only works if prices keep rising, or when the exit depends on a market we cannot see, we pass. Every loan we decline is a loan that cannot hurt our investors. You can see how that discipline shows up in the numbers over time in our recent fund updates on the 890 Capital blog, and you can read more about the monthly-income model on our Easy Cashflow page.

Who this is for

890 Capital is a private real estate fund available to accredited investors under a Regulation D 506(c) offering. Investors earn monthly distributions from a portfolio of first-position loans like the one above, secured by real property in the Charleston tri-county. If you are not sure whether you qualify as an accredited investor, the SEC explains the definition in plain terms at investor.gov. If you would like to see the full offering and how to participate, you can request investor access.

For accredited investors only. Past performance does not guarantee future returns. See 890capital.com for full disclosures.