What photos are required for a draw inspection?

The views most lenders require.

Requirements come from the lender's criteria, so they vary. A common baseline for a residential draw:

• Address. The house number, mailbox or street sign, tying the visit to the property.
• Front elevation and every side. Shows overall progress and anything happening around the structure.
• Each funded line item. At least one photo of the work behind every line the draw requests, close enough to see it.
• Interior rooms once the structure is dried in.
• Stored materials, where the loan allows funding them, showing quantity and location.
• Exceptions. Anything the inspector flags: incomplete work, damage, safety issues or work that doesn't match the plans.

There is no correct photo count. The test is whether every percentage and every comment in the report has a photo behind it.

What to photograph at each stage.

The evidence changes as the house goes up: footings and below-grade plumbing before the slab is poured, trusses and bracing at framing, roof and windows at dry-in, rough-ins before drywall covers them, then cabinets, flooring and fixtures. Work that is about to be covered deserves extra photos, because nobody can photograph it later. The construction lending glossary has a field guide to every stage.

Capture rules that make photos evidence.

A photo proves more when the lender can trust where and when it was taken:

1. Capture in an app, not uploaded from a camera roll, so an old or unrelated image can't slip in.
2. Date and time stamps on every photo.
3. GPS location on every photo, matching the property.
4. Clear, lit, in focus, with enough context to show where in the house the work is.

Photos alone may still lack scale or coverage, which is why most lenders pair them with an inspector's line-item assessment.

Why it matters for lenders.

Write the photo requirements into the inspection criteria and apply them to every inspector, internal or external. Consistent required views make reports comparable from draw to draw. Disbursements are supposed to track real progress, as the NCUA's examiner guide notes, and photos are usually the clearest record of it.

How RAZE handles it.

Lenders define the required photos for each inspection, and the RAZE Mobile App prompts for them on site, whether the order went to an inspector or, as a self-capture Direct Request, to the borrower or builder. Every photo carries GPS coordinates, date and time stamps, the device type and ID and tags the app generates, and photos link to the draw sheet line items they support.