C-Street was born out of our work at a mid-size CM and development firm.  Representing a diverse set of skills, our job was to continuously experiment on how to drive construction costs down not at the expense of risk or value.

We developed a couple dozen hypothesis and put them all to the test.

• Consensus among experienced members of the industry said construction costs ‘are what they are’.

• Others said technologies and design decisions (modular, HVAC systems, structural systems, etc) were the most important factors.

Builders and Developers were flabbergasted how low our construction costs dropped within the course of 2 years. Our 2024 prices were the same as our 2020 prices (before 34% inflation)

At the same time, we started researching construction costs and interviewing developers.  We quickly found that, the same product, multifamily, was costing some developers 300k per unit, and some 700k per unit, and everywhere in between.  And if you look at some of the 300k-ish ones, you’d think they should be more expensive than the 700k ones.  How could something so common of a product vary that much? 

Winner: Discovery and Market Competition.

Our findings are what led us to start C Street.  We realized we can get better results, much faster, via software – by focusing on creating a pull system instead of a push one – in other words, by letting the market do the work for you instead of you spending relational capital chasing after the market.