Draw administration as a service for small developers, and the pricing question that decides whether it works
Consider a draw administration service built for small developers, the 10 to 40 unit range, people running one or two projects without an in house construction accountant. The work is assembling the draw package, lien waivers, sworn statements, reconciling the schedule of values against actual spend, chasing the inspector, and getting the wire out on time. A reasonable read of nine developer conversations in that size range would find eight confirming the pain is real. A late draw costs GC goodwill and sometimes causes a demobilization. But almost none want a monthly retainer, because a project has a defined life and a fixed soft cost line invites lender questions. The pricing that tends to work is per draw, something like 1,200 to 1,800 dollars per package. On a project with 14 draws over 16 months, that is roughly 20k per project, which means 12 to 15 active projects are needed to make it a business. In a market where starts are down, that count of active projects may not exist yet. Two directions to weigh. Staying local and adding lender side work, since banks carry the same reconciliation problem from the other direction, though that raises a conflict question that needs its own resolution. Or going remote and national on the developer side, which trades local density for competing against software built for the same reconciliation work.