KEYSTONE
The project development game
“Sell what you haven't built. Build what you've already sold.”
You are the managing director of Veyra House, a 360-home condominium tower planned for a commuter-rail suburb of Chicago. The site is under option, 80 buyers have expressed interest, and 12 million of 200 million in equity has been spent.
You are the managing director of Veyra House, a 360-home condominium tower planned for a commuter-rail suburb of Chicago. The site is under option, 80 buyers have expressed interest, and 12 million of 200 million in equity has been spent. Over four years you sell homes you have not built and build homes you have already sold, into a market that will exist only at delivery.
The experienceKestren Development holds a six-acre site in Bellmere, Illinois, with an option that expires at the end of the first year. Nothing has been priced, the village has not approved the scheme, and the lender has published its conditions on the first screen. You choose the home program and design package, the approval route, the list price index, and the deposit you require. Each half-year you decide how many homes to release, and every release fixes prices and delivery dates in contracts before the market at delivery is known.
Financial close needs qualified presales, and a signed contract brings in only a deposit. Then construction begins, with four packages awarded at a fixed price or to the low bid, a pace you can accelerate or pause, an inspection level, and the dues you publish. Four buyer segments react differently to rates, dates, and prices, and two or three rival projects break ground on their own schedule. Five market gauges carry six months of history, the phase of the cycle is drawn and hidden, and in at least a third of the markets a downturn arrives during play. You can walk away at any point before financial close, and the game scores a walk-away as a legitimate outcome rather than a failure.
An underwriting assistant ranks product, price, and release plans to maximize forecast margin. It is calibrated on the last three years of comparable sales, so it knows nothing about the market at delivery. Four advisors hold private facts, and you have two conversations a half-year. Before the score appears, one purchaser describes what was promised and what was delivered, and the board chair then describes the sequence of decisions you made beside the path the market took.
- Commit in the order the evidence allows, because waiting has a price and so does moving early, and the skill is knowing which price is larger this period.
- A sale brings in cash only at closing, and every month between commitment and closing is a month of the market cycle you are betting on.
- The market at delivery sets the price, whatever the plan assumed, and a model calibrated on the last cycle cannot price the next one.
- One engine serves three audiences: a real estate student learns why the construction schedule is a financial instrument, a project management student learns why the customer's deposit cannot fund the work, and a data center investor learns what a presale condition is worth.
- Project management courses simulate scope, resources, and schedule, and KEYSTONE adds the money: the sponsor's cash, the lender's conditions, and the customer whose deposit funds the work.
- A developer lives through one or two full property cycles in a career. Each game draws a market, and a third of them turn down during play, so a class can compare a student handed an expansion with one handed a crunch, and the grade stays fair.
- Both extremes fail, because selling everything at launch posts the largest contract count and then fails at closing when the downturn arrives, while waiting for certainty pays carrying costs and loses buyers to the rival that broke ground first.
- Status
- Coming soon. The design is settled, and the simulation is being built and tested
- Company and role
- Managing director of the project company for Veyra House, developed by Kestren Development in Bellmere, Illinois: a twelve-story building with 360 homes and 20,000 square feet of retail. A senior lender, the village, four buyer segments, and two or three rival projects supply the pressure
- Discipline
- Project management and real estate development
- Also fits courses in
- Corporate finance, capital projects and infrastructure, entrepreneurship, executive investor programs
- Format
- Solo, with a class leaderboard. Fifteen decisions, stage-gated so that at most six are live in any half-year
- Time
- Eight half-years, a sellout checkpoint, and an automatic tail to month 72. About 60 minutes of self-guided play before class. The class session is the debrief
- Advisers and AI
- An underwriting assistant calibrated on the last cycle, and four AI advisors, Mira Chen, Daniel Reyes, Asha Rao, and Evelyn Brooks, who each hold private facts available on request. The market, the lender, the village, and the rivals are rules, and no AI output reaches the score
- How you are scored
- Investor return 45%, on-time delivery 25%, promise kept 20%, and community commitments 10%. Your grade is your score as a share of the best feasible result found for the market drawn, in seven grades from S to F. The debrief names one of seven end states, from Delivered with Value to Walked Away
- Teaching materials
- Planned: a student guide, three instructor guides (real estate, project management, and capital-project investors), and a debrief deck
- Audience
- MBA electives in real estate and project management, executive education, and developer, owner, and investor training
KEYSTONE is on the way
Join the waitlist and we’ll let you know the moment it’s ready.