Development Costs for Acquisition, Construction, and Rehab
Table of Contents
This article provides instructions on how to track Development Costs associated with properties in your program's portfolio. The Development Costs feature tracks costs for a project, including the direct costs of labor and materials, contractor's overhead and profit, plus indirect costs like development loan interest.
Step 1: Add a new Development Cost
On the Property where you would like to add the Development Cost, navigate to Related Lists. Select “Development Costs” from the Related Lists and click “New”.
Step 2: Enter Development Costs
1. Complete the “New Development Cost" page. Development costs can be added as an itemized list of separate expenses. HomeKeeper will do the math and show you the total development costs. See the section “Reviewing the Total of All Development Costs” at the end of this article.
- Description: Add a brief description of the development expense.
- Contract Date and Completion Date: If you are contracting with a vendor for the work, you can track the date you contracted with them, and the date the work was completed
- Cost: Be sure to enter the total amount for this development cost
- Cost Type: Choose the phase of development in which the cost was incurred. The picklist allows you to choose from various stages, like pre-development, new construction, rehab, etc. This picklist can be customized by your organization to better fit the stages that reflect your work. See the “Editing Drop-down Menus (Picklist)” article for instructions.
- Notes: You can add key notes or reminders about the development cost.
- Vendor: Contractor companies can be added to HomeKeeper as accounts. You can then link the company's account to the appropriate development costs.
2. Save the “New Development Cost".
NOTE: Other Data Models for Development Costs.
While this feature is designed to track individual development costs as they are incurred, some organizations choose to enter aggregated Development Costs instead. Some examples might be:
- Totals by “Cost Type”: Create one record with the total spent on Pre-Development, and another with the total for “Site Work”
- By Project Phase: Enter one Development Cost for “Phase One” and another for “Phase Two”
- Overall total for the project: Create one Development Cost that includes all work done on a new development with the Cost Type “New Construction.” You could then add another total for “Rehab” later on if the property requires rehab work down the line.
To choose a model for entering Development Costs, think about 1) how these costs are being tracked already 2) what information you need to track on the vendors you work with and most importantly 3) what you need to report on. For example, if you want to track how much you spend per project on Architectural Planning fees, and how much is spent on third-party contractors, you may want to consider tracking each individual development cost.
Reviewing a Historical List of Development Costs
View a snapshot of Development Costs on the property's Related Tab.
You can review a more detailed list of Development Cost records by selecting “View All”.
Reviewing the Total of All Development Costs
HomeKeeper calculates the total Development Costs for a property. You can review this information on the Details tab of the Property record.
