Preparing Your Lender Packet

How to prepare, review and deliver your construction loan application packet on the Bank Ready page — readiness checks, capability profile, narrative, supporting documents and what the PDF actually contains.

What this page is for

**Bank Ready** — titled **Bank Loan Packet Generator** at the top of the screen — prepares the packet you hand a lender when you are *applying* for a construction loan. It gathers your budget, your proposed draw stages, your own qualifications and a cover letter into one branded PDF.

**Draw Requests** is the other half of the story: once the loan exists and you are building, that page prepares each individual request for money.

| Page | When you use it | What comes out |
|---|---|---|
| **Bank Ready** | Before the loan — applying | One loan application packet |
| **Draw Requests** | During construction | One G702/G703 packet per request |

Prepare Bank Ready once, then revisit it whenever a lender asks for an updated application.

What do I do next?

Open **Bank Ready** and read the **Loan Readiness Score** card.

| What you see | What to do next |
|---|---|
| A low score and several **Needs Attention** rows | Select the row itself — each one takes you to the page that fixes it. |
| **Detailed budget entered** needs attention | Go to **Budget** and price at least five real items. |
| **Draw schedule defined** needs attention | Go to **Draw Schedule** and assign SOV lines to at least two stages. |
| **Project timeline defined** needs attention | Go to **Schedule** and add at least three tasks. |
| **Trades / vendor list added** needs attention | Go to **Vendors** and upload insurance certificates — this row measures insurance on file, not just names. |
| **Contingency included** needs attention | Go to **Budget** and add a line with *contingency* in its description. |
| **Supporting documents uploaded** needs attention | Scroll to **Supporting Documents** and upload at least four files. |
| **Owner capability profile completed** needs attention | Scroll to the capability card and select **Build Capability Summary**. |
| **Generate Loan Packet PDF** is greyed out | The score is not 100%. Every row must read **Complete**. |
| Score reads **100** | Select **Generate Loan Packet PDF**, read every page, then send it to your lender yourself. |

Where to start

Two buttons sit under the title:

**Continue Loan Preparation** — takes you to the first incomplete item on the readiness list. If that item lives on another page it opens that page; if it is **Supporting documents** or **Owner capability profile** it scrolls down to that card on this page. Selecting the row itself does the same thing.
**View Sample Packet** — downloads a fixed example packet built from demonstration figures, not your project. Use it to see the shape of the document before you have any of your own data.

Once every row reads **Complete**, the first button changes to **Review and Generate Packet** and takes you to the packet card at the bottom of the page.

What you need before you start

A priced budget on the **Budget** page.
Your budget items mapped to SOV lines, and those lines arranged into stages on **Draw Schedule**.
At least a rough construction schedule on **Schedule**.
Vendor records with insurance certificates on **Vendors**.
Copies of your plans, specifications, land ownership proof, bids and insurance policies as files you can upload.
An honest account of your own construction experience.

Budget, SOV mapping, Draw Schedule and timeline

Bank Ready does not hold any of these numbers itself — it reads them.

**Budget figures** come from the same Revised Budget calculation the Budget page shows: quantity times unit price, plus sales tax, plus approved change orders, plus or minus budget transfers. The packet's **Budget Summary** page groups those amounts by budget category.
**Proposed draw stages** come from your most recently created draw schedule, using the Schedule of Values version that schedule is bound to. An approved schedule keeps the version recorded on it; a draft follows the newest version. Only stages that actually have lines assigned appear.
**The timeline** contributes a task count, and satisfies the readiness row once you have three or more tasks.

**What approval locks.** Approving a Schedule of Values or a draw schedule locks the *structure* — which lines exist and which budget items feed them. It does **not** freeze dollar amounts. If you raise a budget line tomorrow, the packet you generate tomorrow shows the higher figure. There is no amount-freezing snapshot in OwnerDraw today; the PDF you downloaded is your record of what you sent.

*Professional builders:* if your lender hands you their own schedule of values wording, rebuild the SOV lines to match it before generating anything. The packet reproduces your labels verbatim.

Completing the owner capability profile

Select **Build Capability Summary** and work through the dialog: your experience level and a description of it, the professionals advising you (name, role, licence number), how you will manage trades, how you will manage budget and schedule, your risk plan, and any extra notes. **Save** stores it against the project; **Edit Summary** reopens it later.

**Preview PDF** downloads the capability summary on its own, which is useful when a lender asks only for your qualifications.

Write this yourself, plainly. First-time owner-builders often underrate the value of naming a competent team: an architect, a structural engineer and an experienced framer named with licence numbers reassure a reviewer far more than confident adjectives about yourself.

The loan narrative

Once the capability profile is saved, **Generate Narrative** writes a formal cover letter addressed *Dear Lending Team,* using what you entered plus your project figures. **This uses AI credits on your account each time you run it.** Generating twice costs twice.

The generated text is saved automatically and opens in the **Loan Narrative Letter** dialog, where you can rewrite it freely, **Save**, or **Download PDF** on its own. **View Narrative** reopens it later.

**Read every sentence before you send it.** The letter describes your experience and qualifications, and AI-written prose can overstate or misstate them. It also signs off with a `[Borrower Name]` placeholder you must replace, and includes a paragraph about OwnerDraw itself, which you are free to delete. Anything inaccurate about your own background is a serious problem in a loan application — treat the draft as a starting point, not a finished letter.

Uploading supporting documents

The **Supporting Documents** card lists ten items — exported budget, plans, specifications, land ownership proof, contractor bids, allowances, engineering reports, Builder's Risk insurance, General Liability insurance, and an optional appraisal. Upload a file against each with the upload control on its row; the bin icon removes it. PDFs, images, Word and spreadsheet files are accepted. Uploaded files stay attached to the project.

**This matters:** uploaded files are **not** placed inside the generated packet. The packet contains a **Supporting Documents Checklist** page listing each item, whether it is on file, and the file name. Nothing is embedded and nothing is linked. **You must send the actual documents to your lender separately**, alongside the packet.

What the readiness score actually measures

The score is simply seven checks, each worth the same, expressed as a percentage:

| Row | Counts as complete when |
|---|---|
| Detailed budget entered | Five or more priced budget items |
| Draw schedule defined | Two or more draw stages with lines assigned |
| Project timeline defined | Three or more tasks on the Schedule |
| Trades / vendor list added | Vendor insurance coverage reaches OwnerDraw's halfway mark |
| Contingency included | Contingency lines are 3% or more of the budget |
| Supporting documents uploaded | Four or more of the ten documents uploaded |
| Owner capability profile completed | The capability summary is saved |

**100% is an OwnerDraw preparation check, not an approval.** It means this app found nothing missing from its own list. It is not a lender's decision, not a promise that your bank's requirements are met, and not a judgement about whether your budget is realistic. These thresholds — five items, three tasks, 3% contingency — are OwnerDraw's own prompts to get you organised. Your lender's requirements are whatever your lender says they are, and many ask for considerably more. Ask them for their checklist and work to it.

The score card also unlocks the packet: **Generate Loan Packet PDF** stays disabled until every row reads **Complete**.

Generating, reviewing and delivering the packet

Select **Generate Loan Packet PDF**. The file downloads as `OwnerDraw_Loan_Packet_<project>.pdf`. A packet generated from a complete project contains seven pages, in this order:

1. **Cover** — project, location, borrower, total budget, line item count, contingency percentage, number of planned draw stages, and the date.
2. **Owner-Builder Capability Summary** — your experience, your advisors as a table, trade management, budget and schedule management, risk mitigation.
3. **Budget Summary** — your budget grouped by category, with budgeted, spent to date and remaining, and a total row.
4. **Proposed Draw Schedule** — each stage with its item count and amount, and a total.
5. **Loan Narrative Letter** — the cover letter, as saved.
6. **Supporting Documents Checklist** — the ten items with their status and file names.
7. **Project Management Technology** — a page about OwnerDraw and your current project figures.

Pages 2, 4 and 5 appear only if you have that content — a saved capability profile, draw stages with budget lines assigned, and a saved narrative. The packet card lists all seven and marks those three as conditional, so its list matches the file you get.

**There is no separate schedule-of-values page and no construction-schedule page.** Your SOV grouping reaches the packet through the draw stages, and your schedule only as a task count on the cover and final page. Export those separately if your lender asks for them.

**Uploaded supporting files are listed by name only.** They are not attached to the PDF and not linked from it. Send your plans, specifications, insurance policies, bids and land ownership proof to your lender separately.

**Generating or downloading a packet does not send anything to your lender.** OwnerDraw never contacts a bank. Downloading gives you a file. Emailing it, uploading it to your lender's portal, or printing it is your step, and it is the only step that reaches a human at the bank.

Before you send: open the PDF and read it. Check the borrower name, the total, the narrative's claims about you, and that the stage amounts are the ones you intend to propose.

Related guides

[How to Use the Budget Page](/help/budget/budget-page-guide)
[Schedule of Values and Budget Mapping](/help/bank-ready/sov-guide)
[Building Your Draw Schedule](/help/draws/draw-schedule-guide)
[How to Use the Draw Requests Page](/help/draws/draws-page-guide)