EstimAId

Contract sum × retainage rate. NY caps private contracts of $150,000+ at 5% (GBL §756-a).

Loan amount × 50% average draw utilization × annual rate × (term ÷ 12) — a standard rough-planning assumption, not a lender's actual draw-weighted calculation.

Workers × hours × (wage rate + supplemental benefit rate), per trade — NYC Comptroller's published prevailing wage schedule for public-work contracts.

Base fee for the first $3,000 of construction cost, plus $10.30 per $1,000 above that — DOB's own construction-cost-based formula, by building type.

Covers the construction-cost-based base fee for General Construction, Plumbing, Sprinkler, Standpipe, Mechanical, Structural, Support of Excavation, and Protection & Mechanical filings only — not a complete fee determination. DOB Job Application Filings can carry additional fees (other permit types, plan examination, amendments) this doesn't estimate, and the excess portion may round to DOB's own nearest-$1,000 convention rather than this calculator's continuous formula. Source: NYC DOB Service Notice, effective 2/2/2026.

Total project cost ÷ gross square footage — the standard, simplest cost-density metric for comparing projects of different sizes.

No NYC-specific $/SF benchmark exists in public data to compare this figure against — DOB doesn't report square footage alongside filed cost — so the index above is national directional context (is the market heating up or cooling down), not a NYC-normed target range.

Hard cost, plus GC fee, contingency, and soft costs each as a % of hard cost — a standard planning rule of thumb for an early-stage total development cost, not a substitute for a line-item pro forma.

Loading the live citywide average ft/story from DOB filings…

Budgeted amount × (current PPI index ÷ index 6 months ago) — grounded in real national material price trends, not a generic inflation rate.

National trend, not an NYC-specific or per-supplier figure — see the methodology on Materials Pricing for what this index does and doesn't represent.

NYC RPTT + NYS Transfer Tax (both seller-paid) and, for residential deals $1M+, the NYS Mansion Tax (buyer-paid) — real published rate schedules, cliff-based (the full price is taxed at the bracket rate, not just the amount above it).

A planning estimate, not a closing statement — real deals can carry exemptions, credits, or additional local fees. Verify with a real estate attorney or title company before relying on this for a closing.

Lot area × maximum Floor Area Ratio — the standard NYC zoning formula for how much floor area a site can legally build. FAR is set per zoning district by NYC's own Zoning Resolution, not a fixed number, so it's an input here, not assumed — look yours up on ZoLa, the City Planning's own zoning map.

A zoning-envelope ceiling, not a guarantee — actual buildable area can be reduced further by height limits, setbacks, yard requirements, parking, and mechanical/exempt-area rules that this formula alone doesn't capture.

Labor budget ÷ (wage rate + supplemental benefit rate), per trade — then that total labor-hour figure spread across a crew size and workday length to estimate a real schedule length, not just a raw hour count.

Assumes this trade works continuously at full crew size with no downtime (weather, inspections, material delays, other trades blocking access) — a real schedule almost always runs longer than this pure labor-hour math alone.

Slab or footing volume in cubic yards, the unit concrete is actually ordered in. Thickness is entered in inches because that is how slabs are specified; the conversion to feet and then to cubic yards (27 cubic feet each) is the arithmetic people most often get wrong on site.

Geometry only. It assumes a uniform thickness over a rectangle — it does not account for thickened edges, haunches, drops, rebar displacement, or subgrade that isn't level, all of which move a real pour.

Stabilised NOI divided by all-in development cost, compared against the cap rate the finished building would actually trade at. The gap between the two — the development spread, quoted in basis points — is the return for taking construction risk rather than simply buying an existing building.

A negative spread means the building is worth less finished than it cost to build at these inputs. Nothing here is forecast: NOI, cost and cap rate are all yours, and a real deal's cap rate at completion is unknown while it is being built — that uncertainty is the risk the spread is meant to pay for.

How much of a project a construction lender will fund, and therefore how much equity has to be found before anything gets built. LTC is the lender's own term and varies by sponsor, asset type and cycle, so it is an input here rather than a number assumed for you.

Loan-to-cost, not loan-to-value — a lender typically sizes to the lower of the two, so a deal can clear this test and still be constrained by an appraisal. Interest carried during construction is itself usually part of total cost; see the Interest Reserve calculator above.