Real Estate Project Management: Execution, Control, and Results
10,000' View: Project Management in Real Estate (The Real Version)
You know what this is, so let’s stop pretending it’s some trendy new department. It’s war-time logistics with spreadsheets.
At 10,000 feet, real estate project management is just control. Control of time, money, people, and outcomes. It’s command and execution, not decoration. It’s not a title, it’s a function. You either run the damn thing, or it runs you.
The job?
See the whole board, anticipate the fires before they start, and when they do, know how to contain them without crying to legal or losing investor confidence.
If you’re managing a real estate project and you don’t know your numbers, your scope, your contracts, your subs, and your end goal? You’re not a manager, you’re a passenger. And passengers don’t get paid.
The Fundamentals (The Real Ones)
1. Pre-Game: Planning & Positioning
Feasibility isn’t a report, it’s a green light or a no-go. Can it make money? Can it be built? Will it rent/sell/cash flow?
Know your highest and best use before you spend a dollar. Don’t waste time building something that can’t survive the appraisal.
Draw the map before you walk into the jungle. Every phase, every handoff, every dollar, mapped out. Surprises are a tax on amateurs.
2. Budget: It’s Not a Suggestion
You are not spending your money, you’re investing it. Track every penny like it’s borrowed, because it usually is.
Include contingency, always. Assume people will lie, break, or go MIA. Plan for it.
Know how the budget evolves. Every delay and change order costs twice, money and momentum.
3. Schedule: Your Real-Time Scoreboard
Time kills deals.
Build backwards from your go-live, with hard dates and hard stops.
Your critical path is law. You don’t push framing to next week because the guy's truck broke down. Find another truck.
4. People: Pick Killers, Not Cousins
Vet your GCs, subs, architects, and PMs like you’d vet a partner. If you wouldn’t let them handle your wallet or your reputation, they don’t touch your job.
You need soldiers, not influencers. On-time, on-spec, no whining.
5. Communication: Clarity Without Committee
Don’t talk in circles. Stakeholders get weekly reports, clean, visual, actionable.
Team gets marching orders. No vague goals. No “we’ll see.” This is a chain of command.
If you can’t give an update in 60 seconds, you don’t understand your project.
6. Scope Control: Discipline or Death
Change orders are cancer.
Scope creep happens when you say “yes” to things that weren’t in the damn plan.
Lock your plan, then protect it like it’s your equity, because it is.
7. Exit Strategy: From Day One
You don’t start a project without knowing how you get out of it.
Whether it's a refi, sale, hold, or partnership buyout, your plan has to make sense to the market, not just your ego.
The Wrap:
Project management in real estate isn’t glamorous. It’s trench work. It's knowing the weight of a misstep and the cost of a delay. It’s why guys like us still win while the spreadsheets kids panic when a permit takes 3 extra weeks.
This is where real money gets protected, or burned. And if you don’t own it from day one, someone else will… and they won’t care about your margins.