Build the pro-forma skeleton without inventing a number

1 · Learn the move · Constraints + negative instructions

A development pro-forma for a site you have not entitled is mostly empty cells, and an empty cell is an invitation. Ask a model to 'rough out the numbers' and it will fill every one with something that looks like a market figure: a hard cost per foot, a lease-up pace, an exit cap rate. Two weeks later those guesses are in the partners' deck with nobody able to say where they came from. The move is to build the structure with hard negatives. The model lays out sources and uses, the land and entitlement stack, site work, vertical cost, soft cost, carry through entitlement, lease-up and the return line. Every value is a [YOUR NUMBER] slot naming the document that should fill it: your construction group's estimate, your leasing team's TI schedule by office share, the will-serve letter, the conditions register, the lender's quote. The land-specific lines are the ones generic templates miss, so the skeleton carries them by name: utility extensions, off-site improvements required by conditions, dedications, and the carry while the approval is pending. A firm that never sells tests yield-on-cost and the DSCR on the project's own loan, not an exit, and both are formulas the model writes and stops at. The numbers are yours, and the model that computes them is yours.

Build the skeleton of a build-to-hold development pro-forma. Every value is a [YOUR NUMBER: source document] slot. Include lines for entitlement costs, off-site improvements from conditions, utility extensions and carry during entitlement. Carry each building as its own phase, and TI by office share. Never supply a cost, rent, lease-up pace, rate or cap rate. Write the yield-on-cost and DSCR formulas and do not compute them. [what I have so far]