Investors shop rate. It's the number on the term sheet, it's easy to compare, and it feels like the thing you're buying.
Timeline is harder to compare, so it gets ignored. That's a mistake, and it's usually an expensive one.
The arithmetic
Case 1: You're carrying a bridge loan.
$400,000 at 12%, interest-only:
- Annual interest: $48,000
- Daily: $131
If Lender A quotes 8.25% and closes your DSCR refinance in 45 days, and Lender B quotes 8.50% and closes in 14 days, the 31-day difference costs you $4,061 in bridge interest you wouldn't otherwise pay.
The rate difference — 0.25% on a $300,000 DSCR loan — costs about $750 a year.
You'd need to hold that loan five and a half years for the lower rate to repay the extra month of bridge carry. Most DSCR loans don't survive five and a half years. They get refinanced, the property gets sold, or rates move.
Case 2: You're competing for a property.
This one's binary and it's much larger.
A seller with two offers at $340,000 — one with a 45-day close, one with a 14-day close — takes the 14-day close essentially every time, and often takes it over a higher offer. Sellers price certainty. Thirty-one extra days is thirty-one more days of exposure to a financing failure they can't control.
If the 14-day close is what wins you a deal with $60,000 of equity in it, the rate on the loan is a rounding error against the outcome.
Case 3: You're locked and rates are moving.
A 45-day lock costs more than a 21-day lock — typically 0.125% to 0.25% in price. And if your file blows the lock, you're extending at a cost or repricing at market. In a volatile rate environment, a shorter timeline is a smaller window of exposure. That has real value even when it's hard to put a number on it.
What actually makes a close slow
Worth understanding, because it tells you what to ask a lender.
On a DSCR loan the income side is gone, so there are only four things on the critical path:
- Appraisal. Usually 7–10 business days from order to delivered report. This is the longest pole in the tent and the one most lenders manage worst. The question to ask: when do you order the appraisal — at application, or after conditional approval? Ordering after conditional approval adds a week for no reason.
- Entity documents. Articles, operating agreement, EIN letter, certificate of good standing. Good standing is the single most common cause of a delay. It can take a week from some states. Order it the day you go under contract.
- Title. Order it day one, in parallel. Title problems found in week three are what turn a 21-day close into a 40-day close.
- Insurance. A binder naming the LLC, with the lender as mortgagee. Takes an afternoon. Regularly forgotten until day twelve.
Nothing on that list requires 45 days. When a DSCR file takes 45 days, it's because the steps ran sequentially instead of in parallel.
Where speed doesn't matter
To be fair about it:
- You own the property free and clear and you're doing a rate-and-term refinance with no deadline. Nothing is bleeding. Take the lower rate.
- You're planning to hold 10+ years and never refinance. Rate compounds; a one-time timeline cost doesn't. Long enough hold, rate wins.
- The rate gap is large. 0.25% is noise. A full point on a large balance is not — run the actual comparison rather than assuming speed wins.
The decision rule
Compute two numbers:
- Cost of delay = (daily carry × extra days) + probability-weighted cost of losing the deal + lock extension cost.
- Cost of rate = annual rate difference × your realistic hold period in years.
Whichever is bigger wins. On a bridge exit, it's almost always the first one. On a stabilized property with no deadline, it's the second.
The point isn't that speed always beats rate. It's that most investors never run the comparison at all — they optimize the number that's easy to see and absorb the one that isn't.
No W2