Interactive

One building. Every city's assumptions.

Return on cost is what a finished building earns each year, divided by what it cost to build. The number alone means little. What matters is how it compares to the rate that finished buildings of the same type actually trade at. That difference is the value a developer creates by building rather than buying. Ground-up apartments generally need at least 1.25 percentage points of cushion to attract investors. So each city's threshold here is the rate its finished buildings trade at, plus 1.25 points. Below that line, the money goes somewhere else. The benchmark preset is the same building with none of the frictions this publication studies: cheap land, fast permits, cheap debt.