Real estate development is a demanding field in the best of times. But when sour economic winds blow, bringing high interest rates and tight credit, even the most confident developer may put a hold on planned projects.
Fools rush in where the brave dare not go, but what if the brave had access to tools that gave them greater visibility and control during the feasibility and go-no-go processes, reducing risk enough to work in conditions that turn away competitors?
Early users of a newly developed class of development and construction software are addressing the initial budgeting and planning process with software that helps them more accurately align early concept budgets with reality, increasing confidence enough to continue work in suboptimal conditions.
According to Zebel Co-founder and CEO Hamid Hajian, Zebel cost estimating software for commercial developers was designed to capture not just cost data from past projects, but insights on the market value of finished projects and how market value will be impacted by choices regarding materials, location, unit size, parking allocations and other variables. As data from past projects is roundtripped into the beginning of the estimating process, users can add cost escalations to reflect price increases in materials and labor, and also pull in economic projections from third party sources like the Federal Reserve.
Hajian hails from the multifamily development space, and Zebel was initially developed for that sector. Recent extensions of the functionality have made Zebel attractive to other types of development, and to general contractors who are often asked for preliminary budgets by their developer partners.
“Right now, the product can handle any type of vertical construction,” Hajian said. “All users need to enter is two groups of attributes—how many levels, and then how many units or types of space in the project. The software will find comparable projects, which is where we get the unit prices and estimate the quantity times the unit price. If there are 200 linear feet of railings, that unit quantity comes from the design, and the unit price comes from our own aggregated customer data.”
As of this writing, Zebel will also calculate revenue projections for multifamily, closing the gap between cost data and asset profitability data. This functionality will be coming for other sectors too, according to Hajian.
Apart from revenue projections, users are deriving benefit from the software’s ability to quickly generate budgets that come within three percent of estimates submitted by subcontractors in bid letting.
“Before Zebel, we were doing things the old-fashioned way, relying on spreadsheets, takeoffs and a number of other things to come up with a conceptual number,” AMCAL Multi-Housing Vice President of Construction Gerardo Huerta said. “… What I like most is the ability to produce budgets in a matter of a few minutes versus a couple of weeks. All our data is aggregated, and I can pump out any project in a matter of minutes.”
How Developers use Zebel
Developers using Zebel can, perhaps to a greater degree than with other commercial tools, round-trip data from their past projects to get some visibility into how past projects have come out from a cost standpoint versus the estimate. While a number of estimating and preconstruction software products are moving in this direction, few have offered a viable, functional model. Developers using Zebel however can do this, and also gain anonymized data from other Zebel customers.
“Some developers join the platform because they want the market data,” Hajian said. “Every time a new customer joins, they bring their historical data. A developer may not be using our software to create estimates but want to see what others are spending.”
Cost data from past projects are weighted using user-configurable escalation tables that adjust figures year-over-year. Information from external sources including the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) has been included to influence these cost figures.
Developers tend to have multiple offices that often may run on separate adhocratic processes. Escalations data in Zebel however is universal, helping developers adopt consistent processes for estimating and feasibility analysis, which in turn reduces risk. Users can slice and dice data by net rentable square feet (NRSF), cost per unit, unit type, average unit size, parking ratio and more, all in the service of coming up with an accurate cost figure based on truly comparable actuals.
The application can also account for pricing differentials based on geographic market, taking into account not only property values but finish levels that are common in different markets or areas. A project in San Francisco may reflect a price differential compared to a similar one in Sacramento in part because fixtures and finishes are elevated to reflect the local premium pricing and to meet consumer expectations for the price point and neighborhood.
As a multi-tenant software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendor, Zebel can easily evolve the product to make it more functionally rich. Recent enhancements expanded the applicability of the software beyond multifamily, where the product originated. Another recent enhancement shows pricing data in a hover-over violin graph displaying minimum, maximum, the middle 50 percent and the median.
“We receive regular requests for new features,” Hajian said. “One thing we have had to build a process for is the logging of what customer wanted what new feature so we can go back to and tell them when it is available.”
Power Tool for Feasibility Analysis
Zebel may help developers like AMCAL and Huerta quickly generate accurate conceptual pricing but may also simply be leveraged as a what-if scenario planning tool during a feasibility study. A key component of the feasibility study will be an in-depth market analysis. Data in Zebel can be augmented with external data like vacancy and property absorption rates to further automate this step.
Key elements of a financial analysis may also be automated by Zebel with construction costs that are typically within 3 percent of actuals.
One strength of the technology is its ability to assimilate data from multiple sources. An integration with Procore enables users to pull broad project data into Zebel. Because additional data increases value of the platform for everyone, Zebel goes out of its way to help customers incorporate everything from historical budget spreadsheets to drawings and PDFs of plan sets—even Procore project data can come in through a standard integration.
Intelligent Development Software
Zebel is not the only vendor applying parametric artificial intelligence (AI) to construction and development. Other offerings may focus heavily on creating or optimizing a construction schedule, or spotting issues in a schedule that can lead to problems later. Design software has started to use generative AI to design either specific projects, including wastewater treatment plants, or even full buildings.
While these more ambitious efforts may take time to find their way broadly to market, Zebel will quickly solve a serious pain point for developers, precisely when market conditions call for greater scrutiny of projects to ensure profitability.



