The fast no
Most sites do not pencil. Working that out in an afternoon, not a fortnight, is how teams stay ahead of the pipeline instead of being run by it.
01 / 09·The idea
A serious modelling workspace for the first serious question: is this site worth real time.
Site screening is the commercial wedge. Feasibility and financial modelling is the substance. Popurise gives property teams one workspace for both, so the first-pass call on a site is fast enough to keep up with acquisitions and rigorous enough to take into a room with the principal, the bank or a capital partner.
It is not a lightweight calculator. It is not a heavy enterprise modelling platform that needs three months and a consultant. It is the workspace that should have existed all along, built around how property teams actually decide what to pursue.
02 / 09·Why screening matters
The expensive sites are the ones you spent a month on before walking away.
Acquisitions teams see fifty sites a quarter. Maybe four are real. The job is not to model all fifty. The job is to find the four without burning the team to do it.
The defensible yes
When a site does pencil, you need a number that survives questions from the principal, the bank and the LP. Not a number from a workbook nobody else can open.
The pipeline you can read back
Three months later the agent calls about the deal next door. Knowing exactly what you screened, what you passed and why is the difference between a quick yes and starting from scratch.
03 / 09·Why spreadsheet feasibility breaks
final_v7_REAL_FINAL.xlsx was never a system. It was a coping mechanism.
Spreadsheets are brilliant calculators. They were never meant to be a property team's single source of truth for an eight-figure decision. Property has spent thirty years pretending those two things are the same.
- 01 / 04
Spreadsheet archaeology
Every new analyst inherits a workbook nobody fully remembers. They open Cashflow_v6, chase a SUMIF into a tab called Sens_v2, hit a hardcoded number, and quietly decide it is easier to start a new file. Two weeks later there is a Cashflow_v7. Two months later there is final_v7_REAL_FINAL.xlsx.
- 02 / 04
The formula hostage situation
Cell K88 drives the residual. K88 references K71. K71 references a tab called DO_NOT_DELETE that one analyst built before they left. Nobody is volunteering to touch any of it. The model has captured the team instead of the other way around.
- 03 / 04
The laptop problem
If the answer depends on one analyst's laptop, that is not a system. It is a single point of failure with annual leave, a flat battery and a vendor who needs an indicative number by Thursday.
- 04 / 04
The model became the deal
Six weeks in, half the conversation is about the model itself. Which version. Which tab. Which assumption changed. The model should explain the deal. At some point it became the deal.
04 / 09·How Popurise sharpens it
The model should explain the deal. Not become the deal.
Same Australian feasibility maths your team has been doing for years. Different home. One workspace your whole team can open at the same time, with the inputs visible, the cashflow live and the scenarios next to each other instead of in three different folders.
In the spreadsheet
What teams put up with.
- One file per scenario, copied, renamed, emailed, occasionally lost.
- The numbers everyone trusts live on one analyst's laptop.
- Change a base rate. Spend the afternoon finding the other fourteen places it was hardcoded.
- Trace an IRR back to its source. Open six tabs. Give up around the fourth.
- Send a pack to the bank. Discover three weeks later you sent v2.
- A tab graveyard called Archive_old that nobody is brave enough to delete.
Popurise
In Popurise.
- One project, many scenarios, all live, all connected, all version controlled inside the workspace.
- The workspace is the source. Not the analyst's downloads folder.
- Update an assumption once. Every downstream cashflow, residual and report updates with it.
- Click any headline number. See the inputs and the calculation that produced it. Every time.
- Share a live link to a scenario. Whoever opens it sees the current numbers, not last quarter's snapshot.
- Every site you have looked at is still there, searchable, with the reason you passed.
05 / 09·Inside the workspace
Assumptions in. Scenarios out. Cashflow underneath. Reports on tap.
The full first-pass feasibility loop in one place, structured around how acquisitions, analysts and capital partners actually think about a deal.
Assumptions, structured
Site, scheme, costs, revenue, timing and finance, grouped the way you would group them on a whiteboard. No blank cells. No mystery rows. No template drift between projects.
Scenarios, side by side
Conservative, base, stretch. Apartment against townhouse. Same site, every variant in one view, without copying files, duplicating tabs or naming anything _v3.
Outputs, on the first screen
Profit on cost, development margin, equity IRR, peak debt, peak equity, residual land value. The numbers the principal asks for, where you can read them at a glance.
Cashflows, traceable
Monthly cashflow from acquisition to settlement. Every line traces back to an assumption. No phantom cells. No formulas you have to take on faith.
Reports, sharable
A one-page summary for the principal. A full pack for the bank or the IC. Live link or PDF. Whoever opens it gets the current numbers, not a screenshot from a fortnight ago.
Pipeline, kept
Every site you screened, every scheme you tested, every reason you walked. Searchable when the same agent calls back about something similar.
06 / 09·Built for the chain
Built for everyone who has to defend the number.
Property teams are not a single role. They are a chain. Popurise is built for every link in it, with the same workspace, the same numbers and the same audit trail underneath.
- Developers
See the pipeline, the active deals and the live margin without chasing the analyst for a workbook the night before the board meeting.
Read more - Acquisition teams
Get to a defensible number before the EOI closes. Walk faster on the sites that do not pencil. Spend the time on the ones that might.
Read more - Analysts
Build the model once, run it a hundred times. Stop being the person the whole team is waiting on because the file lives on your laptop and the logic lives in your head.
Read more - Development managers
Move from feasibility into delivery with the same numbers, not a fresh export and a new workbook nobody on site has seen.
Read more - Property consultants
Run client work in a structured tool instead of rebuilding a template every Monday for a different client with different conventions.
Read more - Capital partners
Trace any headline number to the assumption that drove it. Audit trail by default, not retrofitted the night before IC.
Read more
07 / 09·Provenance
Built from the inside of the problem.
Popurise comes out of the same fortnights everyone reading this has lived through. The v7_REAL_FINAL.xlsx fortnights. The Sunday evening rebuilds. The conversations where the model became the deal. It is built by people who have done this work, on Australian sites, the long way around.
- 01
Built by people who lived in the workbook
Popurise is not adapted from a US template or a generic financial modelling stack. Every default, every input, every report layout comes from years of building Australian apartment feasibilities the hard way.
- 02
Every default is from a real deal
Construction allowances, marketing percentages, sales escalation, GST treatment, holding costs. The numbers Popurise pre-fills are the ones we used on deals we either delivered, passed or walked from.
- 03
Built with the teams who use it
We talk to acquisitions managers, analysts, DMs and capital partners before we ship the next thing. When the product changes, it changes because somebody using it on a live deal asked us to change it.
08 / 09·Where the platform is going
Feasibility today. Operating and investment models next.
Residential development feasibility is the first live model. The platform extends across the rest of the property modelling stack, one model at a time, with the same workspace, the same audit trail and the same Australian-first defaults underneath.
Live now
Development feasibility
Residential is the first live model. Apartments, townhouses and mixed-use, with sites, scenarios, costs, revenue, cashflows and reports in one connected workspace. The rest of the development sector list is in active build with the teams who will use it.
Open the live modelBuilding
Operating models
Once a site is built, it becomes an asset. Lease-up, stabilisation, NOI, hold period economics, exit value. The same workspace, picking up the moment feasibility hands off.
See the operating roadmapNext
Investment models
Fund-level economics, portfolio rollups, joint venture waterfalls, promote mechanics. Built for the people writing the cheques and the people who later have to explain them to the LPs.
See the investment roadmapThe direction is one workspace for development feasibility, operating and investment models across residential, build-to-rent, mixed-use, industrial, retail, office, hotel, healthcare, self-storage, student accommodation, retirement living, childcare and data centres. Built sector by sector, with the teams who actually use each one. See the full model roadmap
Try Popurise on a real site this week.
Fourteen day free trial. No setup call required. Pick a site you are about to look at and screen it in Popurise.