Class Project: Come Up With Budget for Agrihood Apartment Complex

[James Chavis]

I'm totally lost.  How do you find out the cost for building an apartment complex?  How do you arrive at the cost of the land to build the apartment complex?  I need to make a budget for an agrihood apartment complex that is to be built in Bensley, Virginia.

  The following information is all they have given me in order to determine the cost of everything.  

"An acre equals a football field without the endzones. The sq feet of an acre is 43560 sq feet. The average apartment building size is 20,000 sq feet. So we have 566,280 sq feet to utilize. If we are using 10 buildings that will take up 200,000 sq feet and leave us with 366,280 sq feet left. We can use 4 acres for the garden at 174,240 sq feet for the garden. Girls for change will have a storage area that will be 40,000 sq feet. What they produce will be stored in the building separately from the community. One acre will hold the solar panels to power the community and the girls for a change. (About 550 panel photovoltaic solar array). This will eliminate the need for electricity from the city and give the residents only having to take care of rent. The 108,480 sq feet is left for community playground and courts. Our objective is to rent the apartments to one parent families. The 174,240 sq feet will be split up by the number of the apartments. It will be included in the lease for use of the residents. If a resident does not want to farm their section of the garden or cannot they can rent their section to any resident in the community. The purpose of the garden is to help the residents become self-sufficient. We will have a community store where residents can sell their produce to the surrounding neighborhood.We will also have a storage unit where produce will be stored. That produce will be used for the community and also to sell to retail stores. The profit from those sales will be put towards the community cost to reduce rent monthly."

Any help you can provide me, would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[Chris Seveney]

The process is extremely complicated and what I would tell you is to team with a local apartment developer. You will need to spend hundreds of thousands and probably over $1 million in order to get an understanding how much it will cost you with any sense of accuracy.