Now City Upside Explorer

Agent Architecture ← Home · the tool →
A team of expert agents that builds the deal — and shows its work.

The engine does all the math; agents only ever propose assumptions. The question this page answers: what should the agents be? Not one per incentive, and not one do-everything model — but a team carved the way a real development team is.

The principle: specialize where levers are separable; consolidate where they interact. The physical, cost, revenue, and operations decisions stand on their own — one specialist each. The capital stack (debt + subsidy + tax-credit equity + PACE + OZ + ground lease) is a combinatorial system whose value lives in the combination — so it gets one expert, the Capital Stack Architect, not one agent per incentive.
The stack
A coordinating Lead Underwriter on top, five specialists in the middle, the deterministic engine and the provenance store underneath. PropTech runs horizontally through the specialists — a capability, not a lane.
Coordination
You  +  Lead Underwriter
reads the binding constraint · sequences the team · negotiates cross-domain trade-offs · composes the path to "it pencils" · shows the reasoning
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Specialists — propose assumptions only
Program
Program Architect
building type, efficiency, unit mix, envelope, parking
Cost
Cost & Delivery
value engineering, industrialized methods, contingency
Revenue
Revenue & Placemaking
rents, location premium, lease-up, ancillary income
Operations
Operations & Resource Systems
opex, green infrastructure, on-site energy, ESG
Finance
Capital Stack Architect
the whole financing stack as one expert
PropTech — horizontal capability woven through the specialists (construction tech → Cost · leasing tech → Revenue · building-ops tech → Operations)
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Single source of truth
The Engine — deterministic pro forma
same inputs in, same numbers out · verified to the underwriting model · agents never compute, they only propose
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Provenance & grounding store — every assumption carries its source, confidence, and citation
The roster
One orchestrator + five specialists. (Today's six lever-family agents collapse into these: the three financing agents become one Capital Stack Architect; Operations and the Lead Underwriter become first-class.)
Lead UnderwriterOrchestrator
Owns the sequence and the narrative, not any levers. Reads the binding constraint, asks specialists for moves, and manages the interactions between them — an affordability set-aside (Finance) imposes a rent haircut (Revenue); HUD financing (Finance) triggers prevailing wages (Cost); unit mix (Program) resizes the envelope, the basis, and the revenue at once.
Program ArchitectIndustrialized construction
What we build and how it fits the envelope.
Single-stair / point-access building types, small-efficient unit mixes, FAR utilization, parking strategy, layout efficiency.
Owned levers
effRatiounit mixmaxFARparkCutretSF/offSF
Cost & Delivery LeadIndustrialized construction
What it costs to build, and how.
Value engineering, industrialized / modular methods, procurement, contingency discipline, prevailing-wage carries.
Owned levers
hcreshccontparkCostKsoftRatedavisgreenSave
Revenue & Placemaking LeadRegenerative placemaking
What it earns.
Market rents, location / placemaking premium, lease-up curves, ancillary income, amenity and business-model choices (co-living, flex).
Owned levers
rentsoccsrgrowdistPremdRampancil
Operations & Resource SystemsGreen infrastructure
What it costs to run, and what the systems return.
Stabilized opex, green-infrastructure savings, on-site energy, ESG / operating efficiency, building-ops technology.
Owned levers
opexrcomOpexsolarKgreenSave
Capital Stack ArchitectInnovative finance
How the project is capitalized and how returns are structured — the consolidated expert.
The combinatorial financing stack: compatibility (LIHTC ↔ HUD), stacking (OZ ↔ TIF), eligibility (NMTC), sequencing (size the cheapest non-dilutive sources first), bounded by the hard constraints (DSCR floor, facility cap). Reasons over the grounded incentive rulebook, not a hard-coded script.
The stack it juggles
senior debtHUD 221(d)(4)TIFgrantsNMTCabatementLIHTC equityC-PACEOpportunity Zoneground lease
The Now City stack, one-to-one
The four-part Now City thesis isn't a separate set of agents — it's the lens each specialist reasons through, alongside the conventional industry playbook.
Industrialized construction
→
Program Architect  +  Cost & Delivery Lead
Green infrastructure
→
Operations & Resource Systems Lead
Regenerative placemaking
→
Revenue & Placemaking Lead
Innovative finance
→
Capital Stack Architect
Levers by Now City
The four pillars are the value-creation levers — the moves that beat a conventional pro forma. Everything else is the base frame the pillars improve on. These are the concrete knobs behind each agent.
Industrialized construction
build more, for less
effRatiounit mixunit sizessiteAcresmaxFARparkCuthcreshcconthccomparkCostKsoftRatedavis
Green infrastructure
run leaner, earn from systems
greenSavesolarKopexrcomOpexcpace
Regenerative placemaking
earn the premium
distPremdRampancilcomrentamenCost
Innovative finance
capitalize creatively
tifgrantsnmtcabatebaseGrantaffShareaffDisclihtcEqhudOnhudRatehudLTCcpaceRateglOnglRentozOninkRate
Base pro forma frame — the conventional inputs the pillars improve on
base rentsoccsrgrowpacebadDebtlandcratepratecasheqgpEqdevFeeRateleaseResentCostpermCostdemoCostsiteCostrcapccapexitmvdursaleCostretSFoffSFcomVac

A few levers do double duty: cpace finances green improvements, davis is a cost triggered by HUD financing, amenCost is a build cost that enables placemaking. The owning agent is the one whose decision drives the lever; the others read it.

Why this is different
Acquisition-screening tools layer a single AI "reviewer" over a deal you've already shaped. NCUE's agents create the deal.

A single AI reviewer (screening)

  • Critiques a deal you already entered
  • Grades an existing, stabilized asset
  • One generalist voice over the numbers
  • Answers: "should I buy this?"

A team of agents (creating)

  • Proposes and composes the moves that make a ground-up project pencil
  • Attributes who created which value, step by step
  • Five specialists + a coordinating underwriter
  • Answers: "what do we build, and how do we make it work?"

Scope note: the agents stay on the pro forma, to fit the workflows people already use. Non-financial / regenerative outcomes (NCRDI) are a later layer that plugs in as additional specialists once the framework is strong. And agents can only propose what the engine can model — so the Program and Operations agents grow alongside new engine levers (design quality, business-model variants, proptech opex, deeper green-infra economics). The full written spec lives in AGENTS.md.