Free Real Estate Development Pro Forma Template (Excel)

Development math, not acquisition math

This is a ground-up development pro forma, distinct from the site's Excel Template for Real Estate Investment, which analyzes acquiring and renting an existing property. Development math starts earlier: land, construction, permits, and financing before a single unit generates rent or sale revenue.

The Costs sheet lists every cost line under one of four categories - Land, Hard costs, Soft costs, or Financing - with the summary totaling costs overall and by category, up to 40 lines.

The Revenue sheet lists what you'll build and sell or lease - unit type, number of units, and price per unit - with revenue calculating automatically, up to 20 lines.

Profit, margin, and yield on cost

The Development Summary sheet pulls total costs and total revenue from the two sheets and calculates profit (revenue minus costs), profit margin (profit as a % of revenue), and yield on cost (profit as a % of total costs) automatically.

Yield on cost and profit margin answer different questions: margin tells you how much of your revenue is profit, while yield on cost tells you how that profit compares to what you spent to build the project - useful for comparing this deal against your target hurdle rate.

A simplified educational model, not underwriting advice

This template is intentionally simple: it doesn't model monthly cost draws, construction loan sizing, or a multi-year cash flow - it's built for a fast, single-page gut-check on whether a development's numbers work at all.

For institutional-grade underwriting with a full 24-month deployment schedule, amortization, and returns dashboard, see the paid Real Estate Investor Pack, which includes a fuller Development Proforma workbook.

Confirm any real project's numbers with your own lender, GC, and accountant - this is a planning tool, not a substitute for professional underwriting.

Why this beats the free alternatives

Adventures in CRE's and PropertyMetrics' free development templates both require an email (and sometimes a pay-what-you-can prompt) before you see the file structure - this template has no gate to view or use it.

Proprise's institutional 7-tab model is powerful but overkill for a small developer sizing one project, while GetRefm's back-of-envelope model is intentionally minimal. This sits between the two: real cost/revenue/profit math without the institutional complexity.