The commercial terms · Schedule Risk
Every Month Late Is Carry Plus Lost Lease-Up
On a multifamily deal a month of delay costs carry plus a month of deferred lease-up, and that combination is usually larger than any construction saving anyone negotiated.
Bring the site, the unit count and the drawings at whatever stage. You get a range, the drivers, and an honest read on the pro forma.
Self-perform
Dewatering, SOE and deep foundations in house
Licensed
General contractor, licensed in the state of Florida
GMP
Open book, with the contingency visible to you
Draws
Documentation your lender can actually process
Where Florida delay actually comes from
Not from the framing. From permitting, from below-grade conditions, from long-lead equipment, and from the wet season if the envelope was not closed in time. All four are visible in preconstruction and all four are routinely compressed on the schedule everyone signs.
Long-lead equipment is the risk that behaves worst because it arrives at the end. Switchgear, elevators and generators are ordered early, manufactured against a schedule nobody on the project controls, and a delay surfaces when there is no float left and nothing else can recover it.
The real drivers
- Permitting, which in some Florida jurisdictions is months.
- Below-grade conditions — the largest single source on podium work.
- Long-lead equipment: switchgear, elevators, generators.
- Wet season versus envelope closure.
- Inspection scheduling and the availability of the AHJ.
Where the float actually is
Ask to see where the float sits in the program and how much there is. Float distributed invisibly inside activity durations gets consumed without anybody noticing, and by the time the effect appears it has already been spent.
Float shown as its own item, against the risks it is there to absorb, can be managed. It is also the question that most reliably distinguishes a program somebody built from one somebody drew.
How we handle it
- 01Build a schedule with the assumptions written down and visible.
- 02Order long-lead equipment against the schedule, early.
- 03Sequence to close the envelope before the wet season where possible.
- 04Report honestly when the schedule moves, not at the end.
- 05Self-perform below-grade so the biggest risk is ours to manage.
Order switchgear and elevators absurdly early. On current lead times they are frequently the binding constraint on occupancy, and no amount of speed elsewhere recovers a piece of equipment that has not arrived.
FAQ
Common questions
- What causes most delay?
- Permitting and below-grade conditions, then long-lead equipment. Rarely the framing.
- How early should we order equipment?
- Earlier than feels reasonable. Switchgear and elevators frequently gate occupancy.
- Does the wet season matter?
- For site work and envelope closure, considerably. It is planned around.
- Who carries schedule risk?
- Depends on the contract. Discuss it explicitly before award rather than discovering it.
What we build
Garden Apartments
Two to three story wood frame with surface parking. The cheapest way to build a unit in Florida, and it only works where land is cheap enough to spread out.
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Wrap & Texas Donut
Residential wrapped around a freestanding parking structure. More density than garden without the cost of building over the parking.
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Podium
Concrete parking and ground-floor uses below, wood-framed residential above. The workhorse of urban multifamily, and the typology where Florida ground conditions bite hardest.
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Mid-Rise Concrete
Cast-in-place or precast concrete throughout. More expensive per square foot than wood and often the right answer anyway — particularly near the water.
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Mixed-Use
Ground-floor commercial with residential above. Structurally one building, operationally two, and the complexity lives in the seam between them.
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Adaptive Reuse
Office, hotel or warehouse converted to residential. Occasionally excellent value and frequently more expensive than building new, and the difference is decided by the existing structure.
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More the commercial terms
GMP & Contract Structure
A guaranteed maximum price is the standard structure for multifamily, and how it is assembled matters more than the number on the front.
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Lender Draws
Your lender is a stakeholder in the program whether or not anyone treats them as one. A draw that gets rejected costs you a month of carry.
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Contingency
Contingency is not padding and it is not free money. It is a bounded provision for things nobody could reasonably have known, and it should be governed as such.
Read more →
Next step
Find out what is actually wrong with it.
An inspection, photographs of what we found, and a written scope. If the honest answer is that it can wait another season, that is the answer you will get.