All Forum Posts by: Rich P.

Have any of you awarded a contractor based on GCs and Fee in order to award the contract earlier in lieu of waiting for full CD's to be procured? i.e. If you manage to get a grading and/or foundation permit earlier than full CD's, you can get out on site for this activity. If you have done this before, how did you then ensure you were then getting the best pricing possible once the remaining scope goes out to bid from the GC to the subs with the full CD's? I would assume you make sure its a GMP scenario to see all the backup. Did this work out well?

Just saw this. Will PM

Value is driven by the proforma not comps although you can get comps from talking to the commercial brokers in the market who transact on similar asset types. You can also get info from Costar. Whatever you do, do NOT buy off on the brokers flyer with data. Make sure to do your own underwriting. 

Can anyone recommend a structural engineer in the Bay area in the commercial/industrial space?

@Jimmy NguyenIMO earthwork and subgrade work consistently rank as the biggest impact to changes due to unforeseen conditions or not enough soils investigation. Also, if you do not have a complete control on either the development impact fees and utility fees this can make a huge impact. I think its pretty 'easy' to get a very good budget on everything above the ground because you can in detail, spec everything out for the purpose of getting a development budget number from contractors. You don't even need an architect for that to do any plans. You simple spec out each division and each trade. Tell the contractor what to assume for everything. Don't let them think. Theres no reason you should not be able to get good preliminary budgets for each trade of work with a decent spec sheet. That leaves the earthwork and utility investigation on your hands to figure out. 

Regarding your specialization of energy efficient homes. I cannot comment. I guess it all depends on how much of a premium a buyer would spend on it and what the ROI would be on that premium over a regular house. Would that even be possible to figure out? I don't think most buyers would be able to do that. Unless you make it available in your marketing..

What kind of product are you looking at? Site size? Retail, office..mixed use etc?

Does he know how to develop or build stuff? Would he be doing it himself or looking to invest in a fund or deal someone else is doing. I guess is he looking to be the GP or LP

For something as small as one house being built, I think Excel is your best friend. Its limitless ability for customization and manipulation of data is valuable. Other than that I have seen enterprise level software being used such as Viewpoint, Prolog or Procore. But again for one house Excel would be your best bet. 

In Excel, you could for example set up a summary tab with budget numbers per CSI division that displays your original budget for construction. Then you could link that over to other tabs, each tab being a budget line item with the breakdown detail (if you follow my drift..). 

To track costs as you build, you could set up an adjacent area next to the budget that shows your costs (Think Budget Vs Costs). You apply costs spent to certain areas of your budget.  You can also account for potential changes and link that to an 'estimated cost to complete' to make sure you are on top of your budget tracking. After all, what would be the point of tracking otherwise? Good luck

bump for this. Also have commercial background and would like to see other examples of resi pro forma's. Especially ones that are based on a build for immediate sale type scenario in lieu of generating rent rolls and seeing returns based on various hold periods

Coworking space is big business now. From what I have read, the business model is that they lease up a ton of office space somewhere for x $/sf then they do their T.I., split it all up, sell memberships at a higher rate per unit to make a spread. Again this is just from what I have read. I think WeWork is the most famous of them all. Started in 2012 I believe..latest round of funding was $400m+ for a $10bn valuation. Crazy