Sizing a project into a trough: 40 units or 120 on the same land basis

The number I'd want before voting is your absorption assumption on the 120. Twenty months of lease-up at what per month, and what happens to your DSCR test at conversion if you hit 12 units a month instead of 15. I found my ceiling on a 30 unit and the thing that nearly got me wasn't cost, it was the six months where debt service ran ahead of collections and I was funding it out of pocket.

40 units also means you're done and refinanced while the pipeline is still empty. That's not nothing.

Podium and structured parking is where scope creep lives. On the horizontal work you can price it, on a podium you're pricing a design that isn't finished. Every set I've seen at 60 percent CDs on a five story wood over concrete deal came back with waterproofing details and fire separation assemblies nobody carried in the estimate.

rigging, ask your GC what contingency they'd carry on each option. If they say 5 percent on the walkup and 5 percent on the podium, they haven't thought about it.

The choice turns on one assumption more than the rest: how long the 120 takes to reach stabilized occupancy, and whether you can carry it if that number is wrong by six months.

Run both scenarios against the same three variables. First, interest during construction, which scales with both loan size and schedule length. A five story podium build typically runs longer than a three story walkup, so you are paying more interest on a bigger balance for more months. Second, the completion and conversion test in your construction loan, usually a debt service coverage or debt yield hurdle at a stated date. Miss it and you are in extension fees or a paydown, and the paydown comes from your equity, not your lender's patience. Confirm the actual conversion mechanics and cure rights in writing with the lender before you pick a scheme.

Third, exit depth. A 40 unit asset in a secondary market has a wider buyer pool that finances with bank or agency small-balance debt. A 120 unit deal needs a buyer sized to write that check, and that pool thins fast in a soft transaction market. If your business plan requires a sale rather than a hold, size to the buyer you can name today.

On the cycle point, the argument that starts have collapsed and completions have run ahead of them supports delivering into a thinner pipeline. It does not tell you to take more lease-up risk than your balance sheet can absorb. Higher per-unit cost on the smaller scheme is a known, priced penalty. A blown absorption assumption on the larger one is unpriced.

If you cannot fund twelve months of debt service out of reserves without a capital call, the 120 is the wrong size for this balance sheet.