Highest and best use
Program, not nostalgia
Apartments, hotel, mixed-use, or nothing. The structure, the floorplate and the neighborhood argue for one of them, and the loudest argument is usually not the one the seller is making.
Historic eligibility
Listed, contributing, or eligible
Whether the building qualifies for credits, and what it would take to get there if it does not. Buildings that look too far gone often qualify; buildings that look pristine sometimes do not, because of work somebody did without a permit in 1978.
Order-of-magnitude cost
From people who build
Our estimators price it, not a consultant working from a square-foot average. On a hundred-year-old building the averages are wrong in both directions.
The incentive stack
What it actually earns
Federal and state historic credits, New Markets, Opportunity Zone equity, housing credits, PACE, TIF and abatement — which apply, what they are worth here, and which two of them cannot coexist.
Code and life safety
The expensive surprises
Egress, sprinklers, accessibility and structural capacity. These are where a budget moves by seven figures after you have already closed.
A number you can underwrite
Or a clean no
You end up with something you can take to a lender, or a clear reason not to. We would rather tell you early than bill you for a year of drawings on a building that was never going to work.
