A large payment is often requested long before the building can justify it.

The project may still be at an early construction stage. Permits are described as “in process.” Completion dates remain estimates. At the same time, the tenant is asked to sign quickly because another interested party may be waiting.

This pattern appears regularly in commercial leases and property projects. The pressure to secure the location moves faster than the documents, construction, and approvals needed to make the location usable.

The structural problem is usually not the payment percentage itself. It is the trigger attached to the payment.

A calendar date is easy to write into an agreement. Construction progress is harder. It requires clear milestones, evidence, inspection rights, and agreement on what happens when work is delayed.

Without those conditions, the tenant carries most of the timing risk. A second payment may become due even when the walls are not complete. The handover may happen with unresolved defects. Permits may still be waiting for verification after most of the money has already moved.

Due diligence helps confirm the land, ownership, authority, permits, and contract structure. It does not replace a payment schedule that reflects the actual development risk.

For an unfinished property, progress should be something that can be demonstrated, not something that one party announces.

The same applies at handover. Keeping a small portion unpaid for a defined period can create space for defects to become visible and responsibilities to be enforced.

The real risk is rarely the first deposit.

It is the distance between what the payment schedule assumes and what the site can actually prove.