Lessons from three failed deals

lessons from a few deals that died this week, sharing in case useful: "SBA pre-qualified" listings can have hidden equity injection requirements. one deal asking $1.35M was pre-qualified by the seller's lender — but only with $300K equity injection (22%), not standard 10%. that high equity requirement is a signal the lender saw risk in the underlying deal. worth asking the broker upfront what specific equity injection the pre-qualifying lender required, before going deep on diligence. always check revenue composition not just total. one CIM showed $400K SDE on $980K revenue, which sounds clean. except 52% of that revenue was federal grants ending in 2025 — and the 2026 projection had subscription doubling in one year to replace it. no data supporting the doubling. two other deals went under LOI before or during my CIM review. speed-to-LOI matters more than I expected — buyers who have lender alignment, deal templates, and diligence ready are getting these. anyone else seeing similar patterns?