Is the site worth buying? Answer it with your own costs, not a rate per square metre
Every builder-developer runs this in a spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet's weakest number is always the build cost — a rate per square metre from a job three years ago. You already price work properly. The feasibility uses the estimate you have built, and keeps using it as the estimate changes.
Available on the Developer plan — not in the free trial
The build cost is the biggest number and the worst guess
On a six-townhouse site the build is usually two thirds of the money. A spreadsheet carries it as a rate per square metre, which makes the whole feasibility an estimate of an estimate — and the only way to improve it is to redo it by hand.
Here the build line is linked to the estimate. Price the job properly once and the feasibility picks that figure up and keeps it. Re-price a trade, accept a variation, and the margin moves with it.
Before an estimate exists you can still type a rate times an area, and swap it for the real estimate later. Nothing else in the feasibility has to be redone.
What a development is
An ordinary SmarteBuild job with a development record attached. It keeps its estimates, schedule, orders and documents — the Developer plan adds the feasibility, the sales and the land details on top.
Start a feasibility on a site you do not own yet and the job is created behind the scenes. Turn any existing job into a development with one click. Nothing about your other jobs changes.
Stamp duty and land tax, worked out for your state
Transfer duty and land tax are where feasibilities quietly go wrong, because the rates are fiddly, they differ in every state, and the land tax depends on what else you own. Both are calculated for you, and each suggestion shows its working and where the rate came from.
Duty is worked out at your state's general rates, including the per-$100 rounding, the flat bands and the foreign purchaser surcharge. Land tax is the extra tax this land adds on top of what you already hold in that state — as a company, as individuals or in a trust — multiplied by the number of assessment dates that fall between settlement and the last sale. The ACT taxes each property on its own; the Northern Territory has none.
Everything else gets a typical figure rather than a calculated one: contingency, architect, planner, surveyor, certifier, home warranty, agent commission at the state median, marketing, legal per sale, loan establishment. One button fills every line still sitting at zero, and leaves anything you have typed alone. Council rates get no suggestion at all, because every council sets its own and a made-up number is worse than a blank.
A suggestion is a starting point, not advice. Rates change — they are dated on screen, and re-checked each July. Your accountant still signs off the tax.
A feasibility without time is a guess with decimals
Two sites with the same profit are not the same investment if one takes eighteen months and the other thirty. Every line here carries when the money moves, not just how much.
A start and a spread
Each line starts at land settlement, at build, or a number of months after, and goes out all at once, evenly, or on an S-curve — slow, fast, then slow, the way building spend actually behaves.
Or the job's own programme
Once the job has a schedule, the build line can follow the schedule's cash flow instead of a curve, so the feasibility and the programme cannot drift apart.
Sales land when they settle
Each lot comes in at its expected settlement month, or its real date once it is in the sales register. The 10% deposit can count on exchange or wait for settlement, because in most states it sits in trust.
Interest on what you actually owe
Equity goes in first, then the loan, with interest worked out on the real balance each month and added to it. Not the “half the loan for half the time” rule a spreadsheet uses, which understates the finance cost on every job that runs long.
Thirteen figures, and the two you negotiate on
A bank asks for margin on cost. A partner asks what they earn on their money. You need to know what you can pay for the land. All of it comes off the same monthly cash flow, so the screen, the PDF and the portfolio can never disagree.
- Profit and margin
- Before and after interest, against the target margin you set — green, amber or red.
- Residual land value
- The most you can pay for the land and still hit your target. This is the number that answers “should I buy it?”
- Break-even sale price
- The lowest average price per lot before the job stops making money, and how far prices can fall.
- Project and equity IRR
- The yearly return on all the money in the job, and the return on your own cash after the bank is paid.
- NPV
- The profit in today’s dollars at your required return. Above zero means it beats that return.
- Peak debt and peak equity
- The most the bank is owed, and the most of your own cash tied up at once — in which month.
Where a figure cannot honestly be worked out — an IRR on cash that never turns positive — the screen says so instead of printing a number.
Once they start selling, the feasibility stops being a forecast
Every lot gets a line: type, beds, baths, cars, land and internal area, list price and sale price inc GST, buyer, agent, exchange date, deposit and whether it has been received, sunset date and settlement.
Each status — Available, Held, Exchanged, Settled, Keeping, Withdrawn — flows straight back into the feasibility, so the profit you are looking at is the real one, on the prices you actually got.
Deposits held in trust and sunset dates in the next ninety days are on the top row, because a sunset date you forget is a sale you lose.
Six stages, and where your money is sitting
A builder with three sites running has money tied up in all of them and a different question about each. The developments list puts them on one page with a stage against each, the feasibility profit beside the forecast profit today, spend against budget, and lots sold.
| Feasibility | Before you own anything |
|---|---|
| Land bought | Settled, holding costs running |
| Approvals | DA and construction certificate |
| Building | The estimate is now the budget |
| Selling | The sales register is driving the cash flow |
| Finished | Last settlement done |
On the Developer plan
Development is the one part of SmarteBuild that sits behind its own plan. It is not in the free trial and it is not in Enterprise — everything else in SmarteBuild is.
A closer look at Development
Across every site, under pressure, and on paper.
What it connects to
Nothing in SmarteBuild is an island — that is the point of it. Development reads from and feeds into these.
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Bill of Quantities
The costed spine of the job — items, rates, markups and margin
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Cash Flow
What the job costs you and when, projected across the programme
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Projects & Estimates
Contract stages, markups and the numbers behind every job
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Reports
Every module reports, and every report exports
Want the detail?
The help centre documents Development step by step, with worked examples — written for people using it, not for a brochure.
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