Questions about Silver Mountain Ranches, answered in the words of the people who did the work. The engagement itself is on its own page.
What happens when every claim a raise leans on is checked at its source?
Every claim a raise leans on gets verified before any outside dollar moves, and on a homesite community in northern Arizona all three claims this one rested on failed. The sponsor brought Common Ground in as the incoming development partner on his capital raise. The land was real. He held it free and clear, with certified wells and an appraisal behind it. The paperwork argued with itself, with a subdivision deck sitting against a resort model, a named fund nobody could find, a lender letter of intent that had already lapsed, and an offer to pay the advisors in his own paper instead of cash. We checked the three claims the request was built on against their actual sources, not against what the deck said. When they failed we could have walked. We countered instead, with staged cash, a minority stake that only vests on milestones, a separately licensed placement advisor, and kill criteria written down in advance. Nothing has closed, and after seeing how the diligence ran, the sponsor asked us into every part of the project.
Which failed claim most changed the structure of the deal?
The most telling one was the comparison nobody had run. The investor deck sold a subdivision, and the sponsor's own underwriting model for the same raise underwrote a resort. Then the rest failed at the source. The fund named in the deck turned up nothing in SEC Form D filings, the adviser disclosure system or the state corporation commission, and the lender's letter of intent had lapsed with nothing recorded against it. The land was real and the paperwork was not, so the request had to live inside what the land supports. We sized the senior ask against the appraisal and made the appraisal itself a condition: who appraised it, when, and on what use assumption, instead of an assumption.
How were the findings presented so the sponsor brought Common Ground into the rest of the project?
We countered instead of walking, and we wrote the counter to keep a workable relationship alive. It carried information and consent rights, a cap on the developer fee, and Arizona law. One standard term we left out on purpose, a liquidation preference, because this is a minority position in a sponsor-controlled project, and stacking a preference on top would have made our counter look like the same boilerplate that had sunk confidence in his own paperwork. The findings were about the paper, and the land stayed at the center of every conversation. The response was the ask itself. After seeing how the diligence ran, he asked us into every part of the project.