Why Viability & Feasibility Assessments Can't Wait

Getting viability and feasibility right—before full commitment—isn't just best practice. It's survival. We've spent years watching developers lose deals because these early decisions came too late or got locked into untested assumptions. ## The Real Cost of Waiting When you skip rigorous viability work, you don't save time. You just shift the problem downstream. A developer might push a scheme through outline planning without stress-testing the numbers. Looks fine on paper. Then, 6 months in, when detailed planning constraints emerge or construction costs jump 15%, suddenly the cashflow doesn't work. The site gets shelved. Two years of work, wasted. Or a capital team approves a loan based on developer assumptions without independently testing them. Six months later, the deal turns out to be 20% less valuable than expected. Someone's paying for that gap. ## What Proper Viability Does Good viability and feasibility assessment does three things: 1. **Tests reality early** - Before you're emotionally or financially committed, you know whether the numbers actually survive stress. Different interest rates, longer development timelines, market softness. 2. **Identifies the real constraints** - Not just planning policy, but actual cost, timing and regulatory friction that'll determine whether this scheme works. 3. **Gives you confidence to act** - When due diligence is done right, you can move fast. Finance teams back you. Your team doesn't second-guess assumptions mid-delivery. ## The Time Savings Are Real We've seen developers cut 2-3 months off appraisal-to-commitment timelines by getting viability structured early. Not because the work goes faster. But because decisions get defended and locked in, so delivery teams aren't constantly re-testing old assumptions or waiting for sign-off on fundamental questions. Finance teams reduce credit review time by 40% when they're working from a properly structured viability model instead of reconciling conflicting assumptions across spreadsheets and emails. That's not small. Over a portfolio of schemes, that's the difference between 8-month and 12-month decision cycles. ## You Need Structure, Not Just a Question The problem is that viability and feasibility work today still happens mostly in spreadsheets, across email threads and in conversations. No one source of truth. Lots of reruns. Assumptions change in one spreadsheet but not others. Finance teams don't trust developer numbers. Developers don't understand finance assumptions. Domus exists because this problem is solvable. Bring all the constraints into one place. Test them together. Everyone works from the same model. Decisions move faster and hold up better. If you're working through a new site acquisition, the mechanics of residual land value are worth understanding properly before you run your first numbers. Start now, before the next scheme hits your desk.