A development deal earns nothing while it's being built — the Operations stage is where you tell DealWorthIt when units come online and what they earn once they do. This guide covers the Delivery & lease-up section and the stabilization thresholds that decide when the project counts as stabilized.
First decision: is there an operating phase at all?
The section opens with an Operating phase choice. Pick Deliver and exit and the whole section switches off — and the model is honest about what that costs: with nothing leasing up there is no absorption, no NOI and no stabilized value, so the analysis models the horizon only. An exit that depends on stabilization then has nothing to price, and the calculation says so rather than quietly valuing the project off something else. Keep the operating phase on and deliveries drive absorption; stabilization, NOI and valuation follow from them.
Delivery phases — when units are handed over
A delivery phase is two numbers: the month a tranche of units is delivered and how many. A single-phase project has exactly one; a phased project adds a row per hand-over, edited inline against the running total so every entry is typed with the rest of the schedule in view. The schedule can't exceed the unit count the project declares — the running total warns you early and the calculation rejects an overrun outright.
Months here are the same 0-based grid as everything else on the page: M0 is the first modeled month, and the anchor date only labels months with calendar dates — it drives no calculation.
How units fill
- Preleased units occupy in the first delivery month — they're the tenants who signed before the doors opened. They are not additive with absorption move-ins.
- Gross move-ins is the absorption pace — units per month — and absorption starts the month after first delivery.
- Move-outs (advanced) models turnover; leave it empty and no turnover is modeled once a unit is leased.
What an occupied unit earns and costs
- Market rent is one blended rent for all units — per-unit-type rents are not part of the construction model, so blend your mix into a single figure.
- Other income (parking, storage, fees) is earned per occupied unit — an empty building earns none of it.
- Concessions and bad debt (advanced) shave the rent line; left empty, rent collects at full asking.
- Management fee is a percent of collected revenue — it sits inside NOI, and it's the one operating cost the financing section's operating-deficit earmark won't fund.
- Variable opex scales with occupancy; fixed opex is charged whether or not units are occupied. By default operating costs start at the first delivery month — the advanced Opex start month overrides that, and note that blank and zero are different declarations (blank means "at first delivery"; 0 means month 0).
Stabilization is detected, not declared
You don't type a stabilization month — you declare what "stabilized" means and the engine finds it from the modeled ledger: the first qualifying run of months that meets every threshold (if you require consecutive months, the stabilization month is the final month of that run). The thresholds live in the Stabilization & exit assumptions section:
- Required delivered — the share of units that must be handed over.
- Required physical occupancy — the share that must be occupied.
- Required economic occupancy (advanced, optional) — measured on collected dollars rather than bodies; leave it blank to evaluate physical occupancy only.
- Consecutive months required (advanced) — how long the thresholds must hold before the month counts.
The detected Stabilization month appears in the analysis panel's Schedule group, and the stabilized lens — forward-12 NOI at stabilization, yield on cost, stabilized value — is computed from it. If the project never meets your thresholds inside the horizon, a stabilization-dependent exit is reported as unpriceable instead of being silently valued another way — the fix is more absorption, more time, or honest thresholds.
Common questions
- "My lease-up looks instant." — Check preleased units: they occupy on day one of the first delivery. Absorption pace only applies from the following month.
- "NOI starts before the building is full." — That's the model working: income follows occupied units month by month, and operating costs start at first delivery unless you moved them.
- "Stabilization month is missing." — The thresholds were never met inside the horizon, or the operating phase is off. Both are answers, not errors.
