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Now City Upside Explorer

← Home · Base case starts in the red · stack the levers to make it pencil

Scenarios

The floor

One lever at a time

Stack it up

The deal today

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Upside Explorer: why, what & how it works

Why it exists. Built the ordinary way, many worthwhile projects lose money on paper, so they never get built. This tool shows, transparently, how a skilled team closes that gap with real, defensible moves rather than wishful assumptions.

What it is. A live financial model of a real ground-up multifamily project (it is built for rental schemes of roughly 100 homes and up). It starts from the honest base case (what the project returns built conventionally, with nothing added) and lets you stack on each real move, a more efficient building, public partnerships, affordable-housing finance, and watch the return respond instantly.

How to use it.

Pick a scenario from the dark bar at the top. The numbers and charts on the right update at once.
Hover any scenario button to read exactly what that scenario does.
Open the input panels below to change any assumption yourself.
Export any version as a branded Excel model to share or keep.

The big chart on the right is the heart of it: the return climbing from the red starting point, one kind of move at a time, so you can see what each one is worth. A planning tool for discussion, not an offer of securities; figures are estimates to be confirmed in diligence.

Scenario library · all nine▶

The honest floorWhat the deal returns built the ordinary way, before any intervention. The page opens here. .

Base Case · the honest floor

The deal built the ordinary way: a conventional double-loaded podium of 420 attainable homes at grounded Salem rents, no subsidy, no special financing. This is what the project returns on its own, and why the corridor sits undeveloped. Every lever below starts here.

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One lever at a timeEach scenario starts from the floor and turns on a single category of intervention, so you can see exactly what each one is worth on its own. None clears a 15% hurdle alone.

Building · a better building

Switch the conventional podium to a single-stair Point Access Block. The same envelope now holds ~484 homes instead of 420 by recovering double-loaded hallway area, and most units gain a second exposure. Nothing else changes. The single biggest design move a team controls.

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Construction cost · build it for less

Hold the conventional program but bring construction to an industrialized, slab-on-grade basis (about $273/SF) and right-size structured parking. The cost lever alone lifts the floor to roughly breakeven.

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Revenue & placemaking · earn more per home

A maturing, amenity-rich district earns a modest rent premium, with on-site solar income and ancillary revenue (storage, parking, fees) on top, anchored to what comparable districts have actually achieved.

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Public subsidy & incentives · the public toolkit

What the West Salem Urban Renewal Area can bring to a priority corridor: tax-increment financing, capacity and infrastructure grants, New Markets Tax Credits, and a property-tax abatement. Gap funding alone is the single largest mover from the floor.

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Affordable + tax-credit equity · trade rent for cheap capital

Set aside ~20% of homes as affordable to bring 4% LIHTC equity into the stack. It barely moves the headline return, and that is the point: it is not a return play. It delivers ~84 affordable homes and a large layer of cheap, non-recourse capital that de-risks the deal.

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Finance structure · de-risk, not boost

Swap conventional debt for a HUD 221(d)(4) loan (40-year, non-recourse) plus C-PACE. Watch the return: it barely moves and the equity check actually rises, because HUD sizes the loan to coverage and brings prevailing-wage (Davis-Bacon) cost. Financing structure buys safety and a stronger DSCR (here about 1.20), not a higher return.

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Stack it upPut the value-creating levers together. No single move clears the hurdle; stacked, they reach a credible institutional return while keeping homes attainable.

Full Stack · everything at once

The better building, the lower cost basis, the revenue premium, the full public toolkit, and a 20% affordable sleeve, together. The credible ceiling: a strong institutional return with ~97 affordable homes at the same time.

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The deal todayFor reference: the Investment Summary program at the rents the team now expects to achieve.

Live Case · the Investment Summary, grounded

The Investment Summary program, 400 homes and ~279,000 SF, built the conventional way and carried at the developer's June 2026 underwriting: feasibility-aligned rents the team expects to achieve (about $2.5/SF blended, down from the Investment Summary's ~$3.0), permits funded at the $4M the developer flagged as realistic, and an $8.4M lease-up reserve to carry the building to stabilization. At those terms the conventional deal returns roughly 11% on a straight sale here, in line with the pro forma's 12.55% levered IRR and 1.45x equity multiple once its Year-4 recapitalization is counted. Real, and below an institutional hurdle. That gap is exactly what the interventions to the left are for.

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Glossary · terms & acronyms▶

Point Access Block (PAB): A multifamily building where apartments cluster around a single central core (one stair, one elevator) instead of lining a double-loaded corridor with two exit stairs. Enabled by recent single-stair code reform. It reaches ~90-95% floor efficiency (vs ~80-87% for a corridor) and gives most units windows on more than one side. Tradeoffs: more cores and elevators, smaller floor plates, and it is a newer form some lenders and reviewers are still learning.
Single-stair: A building served by one exit stairway per floor, allowed under recent code reform within size limits. It is what makes the Point Access Block form possible.
Double-loaded corridor: The conventional layout: a central hallway with apartments on both sides and two exit stairs. Loses 15-20% of the floor to circulation.
Slab-on-grade: A building that sits on a concrete slab poured on the ground, avoiding an expensive structural podium or underground parking.
Dual-aspect unit: An apartment with windows on two or more sides, giving cross-ventilation and daylight; a quality and rent advantage.
Base case (honest floor): The project's return built conventionally with no levers applied. The negative starting point everything builds from.
Lever: One real, separable move a team can make (a cost saving, a public tool, a financing structure) that changes the return.
Waterfall: The bar chart that shows the return climbing from the floor, attributing each step to a category of moves.
Levered IRR: Internal Rate of Return: the annualized return on invested equity, accounting for the timing of cash in and out. "Levered" means after debt.
Equity multiple: Total cash returned divided by cash invested. 2.0x means you get back twice what you put in.
DSCR: Debt Service Coverage Ratio: net operating income divided by the annual loan payment. Lenders want it comfortably above 1.0x.
NOI: Net Operating Income: rental and other income after operating expenses, before debt and taxes. The number a buyer capitalizes.
EGI: Effective Gross Income: all income after vacancy and credit loss, before operating expenses.
Yield on cost: Stabilized NOI divided by total project cost; the unlevered return on the dollars spent.
Exit cap rate: The rate used to convert NOI into value at sale. A lower cap rate means a higher value.
FAR: Floor Area Ratio: total building floor area divided by land area; the zoning measure of how much you can build on a site.
NRA: Net Rentable Area: the leasable square footage that earns rent, excluding hallways, lobbies, and mechanical space.
Sources & uses: The capital stack (debt, equity, subsidy) set against where it is spent (land, construction, soft costs).
Hard / soft cost: Hard cost is physical construction (labor and materials). Soft cost is design, fees, financing, and other non-construction costs.
LIHTC: Low-Income Housing Tax Credit: federal credits sold to investors to fund affordable rental housing; the backbone of US affordable-housing finance.
HUD 221(d)(4): A federally insured construction-to-permanent loan with a 40-year term, high leverage, and non-recourse terms.
TIF: Tax Increment Financing: a public tool that reimburses eligible project costs from the future property-tax growth the project creates.
NMTC: New Markets Tax Credit: a federal credit that subsidizes commercial development in qualifying areas.
C-PACE: Long-term financing for energy and resiliency scope, repaid through a property assessment that stays with the building at sale.
MUPTE / Vertical Housing abatement: Oregon programs that reduce property tax for a set period to encourage dense, mixed-income housing.
Opportunity Zone: A federal program that defers and reduces capital-gains tax for long-term investment in designated areas.
Ground lease: Leasing the land rather than buying it, lowering upfront cost in exchange for ongoing rent.
Placemaking premium: The modest rent uplift a well-designed, amenity-rich place can earn as it matures.
Lease-up / stabilization: The period after opening when a building fills to its long-run occupancy.
Affordable sleeve: The share of homes set aside at restricted, below-market rents, often funded with LIHTC.

Assumptions · standard pro forma sections

Area Schedule▶

Site & buildable envelope

Site area

Phase 1 is 5.3 acres. Drag down (e.g. 2.3 for Phase 1A) to resize the parcel. Land purchase price is set separately below.

Hold FAR when site area changes
On: program + unit counts scale to the new parcel at the same density. Off: program stays, FAR moves.

Zoning max FAR

Floor-area-ratio cap. The built program is flagged if it exceeds this.

Layout typology sets efficiency

A Point Access Block (single-stair) wraps units around one core, recovering hallway area. Double-loaded is the conventional choice. See the Point Access Block design brief.

Building efficiency (rentable/gross)

Net rentable as a share of gross floor area; the rest is circulation, walls, lobbies, mechanical. With hold-FAR on, raising efficiency adds leasable units in the same envelope.

Total rentable SF (built)

Drag to size the building; residential unit counts scale to match (unit sizes and commercial held fixed).

FAR (built)

Same envelope as total rentable SF, expressed as floor-area ratio. The two move together.

Unit program (count) · total -

Studio units

1BR units

2BR units

3BR units (family)

4BR units (co-living)

Townhouse units

Unit sizes (SF)

Studio

1BR

2BR

3BR

4BR

Townhouse

Commercial area

Retail NRA

Ground-floor retail leasable area. Scales with the parcel when phasing.

Office / flex NRA

Parking

Structured spaces removed

Reduced parking ratio (transit, shared, unbundled). ~$40k/space saved, parking income falls too.

Development Costs▶

Land & acquisition

Land purchase ($M)

Entitlement ($M)

Predevelopment, design approvals, and entitlement carry before permits.

Permits & fees ($M)

Building permits plus system-development charges. Salem SDCs alone run ~$8k/unit, so this often underwrites higher than a first pass.

Demolition ($M)

Site work ($M)

Grading, utilities, and offsite infrastructure.

Hard costs

Residential hard cost ($/SF)

Vertical construction per gross SF. A single-stair, industrialized build lands lower than a conventional podium; set the basis you can defend.

Commercial hard cost ($/SF)

Amenity & common areas ($M)

Hard cost contingency

Parking cost per space ($k)

Cost of a structured space; sets the saving when parking is reduced (in Area Schedule).

Davis-Bacon hard-cost premium

Prevailing-wage premium that comes with HUD / public money. Zero by default; turning HUD on (in Sources of Funds) applies the standard 8%. Adjust here once HUD is on.

Soft costs

Soft cost rate (% of hard)

Design, consultants, and project management as a share of hard cost. A developer fee and a soft-cost contingency are added on top.

Developer fee (%)

Reserves

Lease-up reserve ($M)

Capital set aside to carry operating costs and debt service through lease-up. Funded into the stack like a cost; it lowers the levered return while de-risking the opening.

Operating Details▶

Residential rents ($/SF/mo)

Studio

1 Bedroom

2 Bedroom

3 Bedroom (family)

4 Bedroom (co-living)

Rented by the room, so it carries a higher $/SF than a family lease.

Townhouse

Commercial income

Commercial rent

$/SF/yr NNN-equivalent across the commercial program.

Commercial stabilized vacancy

Additional vacancy haircut on commercial income. Tenant improvements and leasing commissions are carried inside the commercial hard cost.

Commercial opex (% of rent)

Operating expenses & growth

Residential opex (% of rents)

Credit & vacancy loss (%)

Bad-debt and concession loss on gross revenue, before operating expenses.

Rent growth (annual)

Green opex savings, underwritten

Operating-cost points you carry from efficient systems. Hold conservative until metered in operation.

Lease-up & stabilization

Stabilized occupancy

Residential occupancy at stabilization.

Lease-up pace (pts/mo)

Occupancy points gained per month during lease-up.

Other income & placemaking

District-scale placemaking, on-site energy, and ancillary income lift NOI without raising base rents beyond the market.

District placemaking premium, underwritten

Rent premium you carry as the district matures, anchored to comparable districts that achieved one. Ramps in over the years set below. (Base case carries 0.)

Premium ramp

Years from opening to full premium.

Solar / energy income

Net rooftop / community-solar revenue and net-metering offset.

Ancillary income

Per unit / month: storage, parking premium, fees, retail percentage rent.

Sources of Funds▶

Senior debt

Construction loan rate

Perm loan rate

Equity

GP / co-GP equity ($M)

Sponsor and co-GP equity in the stack, ahead of the LP cash.

LP cash equity ($M)

In-kind credit (% of cost)

Non-cash value contributed in kind (deferred fee, contributed land or sweat equity), credited as a source that reduces the loan. Set to 0 to model an all-cash-plus-debt stack.

Public subsidy & incentives

Gap funding and tax relief that public partners deploy for catalytic, attainable projects in priority corridors.

Committed base grant ($M)

Grant already assumed in the base case; the additional grants slider below stacks on top.

TIF / urban renewal

Tax-increment reimbursement of eligible public infrastructure and site work ($M).

Grants & fee / SDC waivers

State / local capacity and infrastructure grants, system-development-charge relief ($M). On top of the $1M already in the base case.

NMTC subsidy

Net New Markets Tax Credit benefit on the commercial component ($M).

Property-tax abatement

Opex points cut by Oregon MUPTE / Vertical Housing abatement during the hold.

Affordable & tax-credit equity

An affordable sleeve brings 4% LIHTC equity into the stack. It trades some rent for a large, cheap, non-recourse layer of capital.

Affordable unit share (LIHTC)

Affordable rent discount vs market

LIHTC credit equity

Syndicated 4% credit equity entering the stack ahead of debt ($M).

Financing structure

Patient, low-cost, long-amortization capital and land structures that cut the equity check and the carry.

HUD 221(d)(4)
40-yr am, high-LTC, non-recourse

HUD all-in rate (incl. MIP)

HUD loan-to-cost cap

HUD sizes the loan on the lesser of this cap and DSCR. In this low-NOI deal DSCR governs, so the cap only bites in stronger-income cases.

C-PACE financing

Long-term assessment on energy / resiliency scope ($M). Replaces equity; stays with the building at sale.

C-PACE rate

Ground lease the land
no land purchase; pay ground rent

Annual ground rent

$M/yr to the land owner if ground-leased.

Project Returns▶

Exit pricing

Residential exit cap

Commercial exit cap

Cost of sale

Brokerage, transfer, and closing costs at exit, as a share of gross sale price.

Timing & hold

Vertical duration (months)

Exit month (from opening)

Investor overlay (after-tax)

Opportunity Zone treatment does not change project economics; it shelters the investor's exit gain. Shown as a separate after-tax readout.

Opportunity Zone equity
tax-free appreciation on 10-yr hold

Illustrative only. Assumes a qualifying 10-year hold; exit gain modeled as free of federal capital-gains tax. Non-OZ comparison taxes the gain at an assumed 25%.

Export copies the scenario and downloads it. Send it to Claude to regenerate the Excel workbook with these exact levers.

Now City Upside Explorer · Phase One Underwriting Model

Now City Upside Explorer · Multifamily, 100+ units · v1.0 · June 2026 · Confidential

Now showing-

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Levered IRR

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Net Profit

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Yield on Cost

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Equity Multiple

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Stabilized DSCR

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LP Cash Equity

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After-tax IRR

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Dashboards

Overview · property snapshot▼

The program and project at a glance, live with your current settings.

Upside build-up: IRR by lever category▼

Each bar is a full re-run of the engine. Starting from the red base case, levers are switched on one category at a time at your current settings. The final bar is the all-in levered IRR.

Sources & uses▼

How the capital stack is filled, and where it goes.

Development budget▼

Standard cost categories with per-unit, per-GSF, and share of total.

Stabilized operating statement▼

Forward 12-month NOI at exit, the income a buyer capitalizes.

Return summary▼

Levered returns to the equity at your current settings.

Debt & exit▼

Senior financing and the sale waterfall.

Sensitivity: exit cap rate × hard cost▼

Each cell is a full re-run of the model. Rows vary the residential exit cap rate; columns vary residential hard cost ($/SF). The bordered cell is your current case.

Levered cash flow▼

Equity out during construction, operations through stabilization, then the exit. Monthly detail with an annual summary.