Every line in the rent

A Housing Breakdown takes one development — sometimes a real project, sometimes a representative one built from published data — and prices every line it carries. Land, construction, fees, financing, property taxes, insurance, operations, reserves and the return the capital was promised. Then it works forward to the number that matters to a renter: the monthly rent those costs require.

Every figure is modeled, and every figure is labeled by what it actually is — required revenue, cash expenses, annualized capital cost, or modeled economic contribution. Those are four different kinds of number and they do not add up to a rent check. A breakdown shows what the building has to earn, not where a tenant’s payment physically goes.

The assumptions are published with every breakdown — rates, terms, cost basis, vacancy, holding period — so a reader who disagrees can see exactly which input to change. The standing approach is set out in our methodology.