PrizmModelling
The full pack behind a complex property transaction — live financial model, pro-forma accounts, investment and credit memoranda, and fully documented assumptions — built by someone who knows where the committee's thresholds sit before the lender says a word.
Part of the Prizm Method
Modelling can be commissioned on its own — a standalone pack, with no wider engagement required. It is also a stage of the Prizm Method, turning researched assumptions into a decision a committee can defend. See how it fits →
The premise
Every lender has thresholds, and they are not printed on the application form. Debt service cover is tested monthly through the refinance, not annually on averages. Loan-to-value is measured against modelled income, not the purchase price. Stress runs hit exit yield, voids and escalation simultaneously — because that is how trouble actually arrives.
Knowing where those lines sit — for that bank, that committee and that asset class — is not something an investor learns on the first submission. It is earned one submission at a time, and it compounds across cycles, because the thresholds themselves move when rates and credit appetite do.
The submissions that move fast are the ones built by people who already know the answers the analyst will ask for. That knowledge, and a pack that answers the questions upfront, is the cheapest thing in the entire transaction.
What Prizm builds
A ten-year cashflow model, monthly through the refinance and annually to exit. Debt service cover, loan-to-value, interest cover and headroom tested on the assumptions the credit committee actually applies — not on averages.
Forward-looking IFRS-style statements — income statement, balance sheet and cashflows — so the numbers a lender or investor sees in the pack tie directly to the numbers they will see in the entity once the deal closes.
The equity case, written for an investment committee: strategy, market position, sponsor, structure, returns and the risks that survive the downside — quantified, not asserted.
The debt case, written for a credit committee: security, covenants, headroom, stress runs, and the answers to the four rounds of queries the analyst would otherwise send back.
Every input traced to its source — market rentals, cap rates, vacancy, escalation, cost benchmarks, tax treatment. The pack survives a due-diligence auditor working backwards from the outputs.
The arithmetic
A submission that misses the thresholds does not get declined — it gets queried. Three weeks per round, four or five rounds, and a R150 million acquisition is now four months old. The escalation clause has ticked. Guarantee and commitment fees have run.
The equity is committed but earning nothing. The seller and the rate cycle have both had a hundred days to change their minds. None of that friction improves the deal. All of it is priced into the sponsor's outcome.
Against that stands a once-off cost: a properly built pack that answers the four rounds of queries before they are asked. In South Africa, where every rand of capital carries an emerging-market premium, this is not gold-plating — it is the standard development finance institutions already enforce, and commercial banks apply the same logic whether the form admits it or not.
For sponsors in the R50–300+ million range, the arithmetic is not close. The pack is invoiced once; the friction compounds quietly.
The arithmetic, live
Every avoidable query round holds the equity idle, keeps the commitment fees ticking, and lets the price escalate underneath the deal. This is that cost — illustrative, not a real transaction, and built on your own inputs.
Idle equity charged at the opportunity cost of its target return, not a borrowing rate. Escalation applies to the whole deal but only the equity slice is sponsor-borne — at constant loan-to-value the lender funds its share of any price rise.
Credibility at the credit table
Credibility at the credit table cannot be bought. Lead with the upside and bury the downside, and the analyst will run the downside for you — on harsher assumptions, on their timeline.
Name your risks, quantify them, and show the headroom that survives them, and the analyst becomes your advocate inside the committee on your numbers.
Where it fits
Modelling sits alongside Prizm's advisory mandates — acquisitions, recapitalisations, refurbishments, repositionings, forward funding and leasehold structures — and provides the artefact those mandates ultimately have to defend at a committee table.
Sponsors and investors who need the pack, but not the wider advisory engagement, can also commission the modelling as a standalone.
Contact
Best fit: complex commercial property transactions in the R50–300+ million range, going to a credit committee or an investment committee where the pack has to hold up under scrutiny.
