With a housing deficit of 4.5 million homes, we need developers to grow the housing stock as efficiently as possible. Today, building a single-family home takes 9 to 24 months from initial deal evaluation to final sale, and building multi-family takes even longer. For a developer looking to break into a new market, this can be an even longer process depending on the research, market analysis, design, construction, and final inspection processes involved. Outer Labs is building tools to shorten this timeline by attacking one of the most pervasive issues in the construction industry: data fragmentation. Central to our technology solution is bringing a firm’s data into one common data model, enabling flexible and fast decision-making with a holistic understanding of risk.

Data Silos are Slowing Development

Residential developers typically meet with their design and construction teams once a week, where dozens of decisions are made regarding financing, regulatory processes, design, construction, and sales. Thousands of decisions are made over a project's lifespan. The data developers need to make informed decisions is siloed by various systems and disciplines, resulting in inconsistent formats that are difficult to join back together.

It’s more critical than ever that these reside in a single location to serve as a source of truth. For example, during feasibility, a team of underwriters, developers, and architects analyzes comparisons of potential sites to maximize deal potential. The metrics they depend on are critical to establishing a project schedule, an accurate financial model, and ultimately making the go-or-no-go decision. How can developers get high-quality decision-making data if the information is fragmented, cumbersome, and often lacking context?

Residential Development Metrics

• Site comparisons: Developers need access to current and historical land metrics and hard and soft costs to develop a holistic financial model. This information comes from vendors, property listing information, and historical data that isn’t always readily available. 
• Zoning and Entitlements: Meticulous research and a holistic understanding of zoning information are paramount, as incomplete or inaccurate conditions can have a disastrous impact on the feasibility of a project. This requires analysis of a city’s online municipal code, zoning maps, and online property information tools, and sometimes visits to the planning office to view physical copies of maps and ordinances. They also need to understand historical approval rates, the number of applications that have successfully navigated a jurisdiction, and average approval times. This information comes from direct experience and City planners in varying formats and changes as zoning updates and amendments are introduced. 
• Market Trends: Developers must understand contextual information on occupancy rates, markets, and economic drivers to determine a project’s feasibility, develop financial projections, assess risk, and make design decisions to secure financing. This information comes from consultants, software, and hard-earned intuition.

This information is likely stored in silos among stakeholders and is not efficiently managed from phase to phase or consultant to consultant. This inefficiency leads to miscommunication, missed opportunities, and schedule delays. A strategic developer will consolidate everything under one common data model with a consistent organizational structure, enabling them to make data-informed decisions quickly and maximize their deal potential.

Translating Experience from Commercial Projects

Outer Labs has built enterprise systems that serve as single sources of truth for top Fortune 500 tech companies. Our commercial clients needed mission-critical portfolio planning and decision-making tools to help implement their strategic vision and build spaces that support their employees. This involves determining the right type of spaces, location, timing, and cost across a global real estate portfolio amidst changing market forces. Like residential developers, their existing workflows involve complex spreadsheets in which data is manually entered and updated from multiple sources. This process is time-consuming, doesn’t provide feedback loops between stakeholders, does not respond to changing supply and demand needs, or provides easy access to qualitative and contextual information. Modern developers want less manual data entry, the ability to see comparisons, and better usability to get answers to complex questions faster.

Helping Real Estate Owners Overcome Fragmentation

Our tools have taken existing functionality and shifted it into modern technology platforms. We’ve taken robust databases, layered in best user experience design practices, and applied our systems integration expertise to automate data retrieval and make information configurable. This allows users to extract what they need. For example, we have built tools that serve as a single source of truth for validated historical cost data. This information is stored in various formats, from old spreadsheets to CRM platforms, and physical documentation. We have automated data collection and developed an information model that is consistent, organized, and distributed efficiently. 

Data management is further enhanced with tools that enable flexible filtering so users can jump-start their concept budget exploration, browse existing projects, and filter by project type, cost, year, and more. Instead of digging through separate project folders, asking multiple stakeholders, and bouncing between spreadsheets for costing information, design guidelines, or the latest schedule, our tools allow users to compare projects quickly and jump between macro and micro on one central platform. 

We have done this repeatedly at the building scale, where users must validate historical cost data or access design guidance and procurement resources for individual construction projects. We’ve also done this on a larger portfolio scale, accelerating performance and streamlining the decision-making process in response to ever-changing supply and demand. This experience has repeatedly shown that companies that master data and codify their existing workflows will spend less time toiling to find the right information and more time making high-impact decisions and focusing on fast execution.

Help Us Shape the Future

Today, we are shifting our focus to residential development, providing developers with access to land and construction comps to help them maximize a deal’s potential. Unlock access to capital and take your residential development projects to the next level. Reach out to hello@outerlabs.io and sign up for our newsletter. Let’s discuss how you currently approach land acquisition and what challenges you face. We look forward to connecting!

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