Part 3
When creating a financial model for real estate development, one of the biggest pain points is determining accurate cost and revenue inputs. Gathering reliable data, projecting growth over the lifecycle, and understanding trends in a competitive market are daunting tasks. Whether you’re sifting through different bids or assessing historical trends, making informed decisions is crucial to your project’s success.
FORGE simplifies this process by giving users access to a robust historical database where they can store and analyze their own project data, as well as leverage pre-existing industry data available within the software. By offering filters like date, location, structure type, and more, you can drill down to precisely the data you need, be it the cost of similar projects in the same city or the revenue trends for a particular building type.
FORGE doesn’t just stop at providing raw data. Our platform allows you to link model parameters directly to historical data points. For example, if you want to estimate the duration of laying a foundation, you can set filters to pull from similar projects within the database, specifying factors like the city, building footprint, or structure type. You can choose to use the average, minimum, or maximum of the filtered results, and once this link is established, you have the option to automatically update your data as newer points meeting those conditions become available.
Importing large datasets can be tedious, especially when categorizing and tagging them. That’s why FORGE integrates AI-driven assistance to streamline this process. The AI suggests cost and revenue codes for each data point, reducing the manual workload to just a quick review and confirmation of the suggested tags. This automation makes it easier to organize project data into categories like cost codes, revenue codes, and work package codes, ensuring more efficient tracking and reporting.
In addition to helping users predict costs and revenues, FORGE’s benchmarking capabilities allow you to compare your project’s performance against others in your portfolio or across the market. Assessing metrics like cost per square foot or revenue per unit for similar projects in the database helps you evaluate whether your assumptions are too optimistic or too conservative. By aligning your expectations with industry standards, you can refine your financial model and improve project outcomes.
These powerful data-driven tools are fully integrated with other features in the FORGE ecosystem, such as budgeting, cost allocation, and cash flow management. Whether you’re updating project assumptions based on benchmarking data or forecasting cash flows, all changes automatically reflect across your model. This seamless connection ensures that you have an up-to-date, accurate view of your financials at every step.
In real estate development, reliable data and insightful analysis are key to making informed financial decisions. With FORGE, you get more than just a database—you gain a comprehensive toolkit that combines data, automation, and advanced financial modeling into one cohesive platform. By reducing the guesswork and improving accuracy, FORGE helps you confidently plan and execute your projects, ensuring stronger outcomes in an increasingly competitive market.
