Your build cost is the number other developers are guessing
Two to ten townhouses on a site you bought yourself. The feasibility everyone else runs in a spreadsheet has one weak number in it — the build — and you are the only one who can price it properly. SmarteBuild joins the two.
One job, from "should I buy it?" to the last settlement
A development is an ordinary SmarteBuild job with a development record on it. Nothing you already do changes; the feasibility, the land details and the sales sit on top.
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1
Price the build properly
Everything in the Builder plan — take-off, bill of quantities, orders, claims and the programme. This is the part a developer without a building arm cannot do, and it is the number the whole feasibility turns on.
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2
Test the site against it
The feasibility picks the build cost up from that estimate and keeps it. Land, duty, consultants, contributions, holding, selling and finance sit around it, each with a date and a spread, not just an amount.
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3
Decide what you can pay
Residual land value is the most you can pay for the site and still hit your target margin. Break-even sale price is how far prices can fall before it stops making money. Those are the two numbers you negotiate on.
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4
Build it, then sell it
The estimate becomes the budget the moment you buy. As lots exchange and settle, the sales register replaces your forecast prices with the real ones and the profit updates itself.
What a bank asks, and what a partner asks
A lender wants margin on cost and your peak debt against the facility. A partner wants to know what they earn on their own money. Both come off the same month-by-month cash flow, with interest worked out on the real loan balance rather than a rule of thumb.
- Profit and margin, before and after interest, against your target
- Project IRR, equity IRR, NPV at your required return
- Peak debt and peak equity, and the month each falls in
- Residual land value and break-even sale price
- A printable feasibility in the order a lender reads it
The forecast becomes the actual, lot by lot
Each lot carries its list price, its sale price, the buyer, the agent, the deposit and whether it has been received, the sunset date and the settlement. As those fill in, the feasibility stops being a forecast and starts being the job's real profit.
- Available, held, exchanged, settled — and what you are keeping
- Deposits held in trust, and sunset dates in the next ninety days
- Settlement dates drive the cash flow, not an assumption
- Pre-sale cover, for the bank's condition
Where your money is, across all of them
Three sites running means money tied up in all three and a different question about each. Every development on one page, with its stage, what you thought you would make, what you will make now, spend against budget and lots sold.
Stamp duty and land tax are worked out from your state's current rates, and every suggestion shows its working and its source before you accept it. They are the two lines a spreadsheet nearly always gets wrong.
It is not in the free trial
Development is the one part of SmarteBuild behind its own plan — not in the 30-day trial, and not in Enterprise. Everything else in SmarteBuild is in the trial, so you can try the estimating and the job management first and add Development when you are ready.
Test a site you are looking at now
Put the land price, your own estimate and your sale prices in, and see what you can actually afford to pay for it.