REAL ESTATE FINANCIAL MODELING

What Every Founder Needs to Know About Acquisitions, Development, and the Numbers Behind the Deal

By: William McNarland CFA

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Most founders get into real estate and build a model that is missing half the math. This book fixes that.

Whether you are buying your first apartment building, underwriting a portfolio, or developing a project from the ground up, the financial model is the single most important tool you will use. It tells you whether a deal works, how much capital you need, what your investors will earn, and what happens when your assumptions are wrong.

Real Estate Financial Modeling is the ninth book in the series A Founder's Conversations with a Fractional CFO. Written in the same direct, first-person style as the previous eight books, it walks you through the specific financial models that real estate deals require, with real dollar amounts, real scenarios, and the mistakes that cost founders real money.

Inside, you will learn:

How to model net operating income, cap rates, and cash-on-cash return for acquisition deals

How to build a development budget with hard costs, soft costs, and a construction draw schedule

How to model the lease-up period from certificate of occupancy to stabilization

How waterfall structures and LP/GP profit splits work in a real estate model

How to stress-test your assumptions with sensitivity analysis and downside scenarios

How to present your model to both investors and lenders, who want very different things

The most expensive modeling mistakes founders make, and how to avoid every one of them

This is not a textbook. It is a practical guide written by a fractional CFO who has sat across the table from founders making these decisions for more than twenty-five years. Every chapter is built around a real question that a real founder asked, answered with specific numbers and honest advice.

If you have read Financial Modeling (Book Four) or Fundraising Mechanics (Book Eight), this book extends those frameworks into the world of real estate. If this is your first book in the series, it stands on its own.