Development Budget and Yield on Cost Analyst☆

Builds or audits a ground-up or heavy-redevelopment budget, ties it to sources and uses, and tests whether the project still makes money at today's rents and under stress. Written from the sponsor's side; construction lenders can use it to check that a submitted budget is complete and still pencils.

What it does

• Rebuilds the budget into land, hard, soft, financing, contingency, fee and reserve groups
• Finds missing lines, items that don't belong (equity returns, corporate overhead), and contingency hidden in unit prices
• Ties uses to sources and runs the in-balance test
• Computes untrended and trended yield on cost, development spread, margin and residual land value
• Stresses hard-cost overruns, lower rents, wider exit cap rates and delay, and finds the overrun that erases the spread

When to use it

• A construction loan request arrives with a sponsor budget
• Before an investment committee
• After a bid, change order or repricing
• Setting a land price ceiling

What to have ready

• The draft budget at whatever detail exists
• Site facts, unit count and rentable area
• Stabilized rent, expense and cap rate evidence with dates
• Any debt and equity terms and the contractor's pricing

How to use it

1. Download it with the button above. You'll sign in with a work email — that's how the creator knows who is using their skill.
2. Copy the install prompt from the "Run it in Claude" box, and paste it into Claude along with the file. Claude installs the skill, fills in your firm's details where the file has [BRACKETED] placeholders, and runs a quick test with you.
3. Then just ask in plain English. Claude picks the skill up on its own when a request matches it. Anything it still needs, it asks you for — it won't invent a number.

"Audit this $[AMOUNT] development budget for [PROJECT] in [CITY]. Is anything missing, and does it still clear at today's rents if hard costs run 10% over?"

What you get back

A budget summary, sources and uses, return metrics, a sensitivity table, a list of budget gaps with dollar exposure, and a verdict.

Good to know

• Output quality tracks input quality. A missing figure is flagged as missing — it is never estimated to fill a gap.
• Every draft is a starting point for your own review, not a finished decision.
• Runs anywhere Claude does: the Claude app, Claude Desktop, or Claude Code.
• All cost, cap rate and escalation figures cited by the author are dated and directional; re-validate them against current local pricing. Institutional benchmarks in the skill are order-of-magnitude checks, not a basis.

Source & credit

Imported from Avi Hacker's open-source cre-agent-skills library (Apache-2.0). Author: Avi Hacker, J.D. (The AI Consulting Network) — https://github.com/ahacker-1/cre-agent-skills. LenderSkills added front matter so Claude can recognize the skill; it also appended a legal disclaimer, and the package header lists every change. The author's content is otherwise unmodified. Full credit to the author. Avi Hacker did not submit this listing and does not endorse it — the original is free at the link above.

Legal disclaimer

This skill drafts; it does not decide. Its output is not legal, tax, accounting, appraisal, or investment advice, and using it creates no attorney-client, fiduciary, or advisory relationship. Nothing it produces is a commitment to lend or an offer to sell a security. Verify every number, date, citation, and conclusion against the source documents, and have a qualified professional licensed in the relevant jurisdiction review the work before you rely on it or send it to a borrower, investor, counterparty, or regulator. Laws, rates, and market data change. The final work product is yours.