My $280,000 construction note has been running 14 months and the principal is barely down $9,000

The math you walked through is correct, and the $29,000 interest collected against $9,000 principal retired is a clean illustration of why loan term is the variable most borrowers underweight at closing.

The assumption doing the most work in that borrower's confusion is that equal monthly payments mean roughly equal principal reduction each month. They do not. The payment is constant but the split shifts across the full 360-period schedule, and the shift is slow enough that it is nearly invisible inside any 12-month window.

The risk you did not mention: on a construction note specifically, if the project is refinancing out at maturity or being sold, the borrower's equity position at that exit point depends almost entirely on appreciation, because paydown is almost zero at 14 months. If ARV assumptions were aggressive at origination and the market softens, the borrower exits with $271,200 still outstanding against an asset that may not support it. The amortization table is not the problem in that scenario, but it removes a cushion the borrower probably thought was building.

The 15-year comparison you ran is the right frame. The payment difference on $280,000 at 7.25 between a 30 and a 15 is meaningful, and most borrowers see only the monthly delta rather than the cumulative principal position at year five. If you are originating these notes and borrowers are surprised at month 14, it might be worth building a year-one and year-five balance projection directly into the closing disclosure you give them, not as a disclosure requirement (your compliance counsel owns that question) but as a practical expectation-setting tool.

What is the typical hold period on the construction notes you originate, and are borrowers generally planning a refi out or a sale at completion?

What term did he originally think he was getting? A lot of borrowers hear "30-year" and process it as "safe and manageable" without ever running what that actually costs on the interest side across the first decade.