Founder and Editor, Housing Unpacked
Max Benedict is an active multifamily real estate developer based in Michigan. He has taken apartment projects through entitlement, financing, construction and lease-up, and he writes from the perspective of someone who has had to make the numbers work before anything could be built.
He founded Housing Unpacked because most conversations about housing affordability focus on outcomes and blame rather than on the inputs that produce a rent number. The pro forma that decides whether a building gets built is rarely shown to the public. Housing Unpacked exists to show it, line by line, and to make the tradeoffs behind each line visible.
His articles state their assumptions, show their arithmetic and label modeled figures as modeled. Where a conclusion depends on a judgment call, he says so. Readers who disagree with an assumption are invited to change it; most quantitative pieces include the inputs needed to do exactly that, and the Methodology page explains the shared model behind them.
Max Benedict is a principal of a real estate development company and has participated in multifamily development projects subject to the regulations, financing structures and market forces discussed on Housing Unpacked. He writes in a personal capacity. See our Conflicts & Disclosures page.
