1 — You send it
An address and two sentences
Street address, what you think you might do with it, and whether you own it yet. That is enough to start. If you have a rent roll, a survey or an inspection, send those too and the answer gets sharper.
2 — We walk it
Usually within a week
A principal and someone from construction, in the building, with a flashlight. Not an intern with a camera. What a building is hiding shows up in the basement and the roof, not in the listing photographs.
3 — We price it
Our estimators, not an average
Order-of-magnitude construction cost from the people who build these, against the scope the building actually needs. Square-foot averages are wrong in both directions on a hundred-year-old structure.
4 — We check the credits
Federal, state, local
Historic eligibility, what the credit is worth in that state, and which other programs stack — New Markets, Opportunity Zone, housing credits, PACE, abatement, TIF. Including which two of them cannot coexist.
5 — You get a number
Inside two weeks
Highest and best use, a program that fits the structure, a cost range, the credit stack, and the fatal flaws if there are any. Enough to take to a lender or to walk away from.
6 — Go, no-go, or here is what would fix it
All three are real answers
Roughly a third of the time we tell people not to buy it. That is the answer that saves the most money, and it is the reason the first one is free.
