Most property developers can build a feasibility. The harder question is whether the numbers hold up once someone independent pulls them apart. A feasibility advisor does exactly that. They may prepare a development feasibility for you, or review and stress-test the one you have already built, working with a developer’s commercial lens rather than a box-ticking one.
This is different from hiring a development manager to run your project, and different again from the quantity surveyor (QS), valuer or town planner who each feed one input into your model. A feasibility advisor takes the whole financial picture and pressure-tests it.
This guide sets out what feasibility advisory and development due diligence involve, when engaging one tends to pay off, how these specialists typically price the work, and how to tell a genuine feasibility advisor from a development consultant who happens to use the word. It also includes a state-by-state list of credible Australian providers to approach, from boutiques to national firms.
What feasibility advisory actually is
A development feasibility is the financial model that answers one question: does this project stack up? It pulls together the gross realisable value (the revenue from completed sales, or the value of the finished asset), every cost of getting there (land, construction, professional fees, statutory and authority charges, finance, holding costs and a contingency), and a return metric such as development margin, internal rate of return or net present value.
Feasibility advisory is the service of either building that model for you, or reviewing one you have already built. The review version is often described as a second set of eyes. A good advisor does not just check the arithmetic. They test whether the assumptions are current and defensible, whether the cost lines are complete, and whether the revenue is supported by genuine comparable evidence rather than optimism.
The distinction worth holding onto is this. A feasibility advisor tells you whether, and on what basis, a project should proceed. They do not run the project. That is a separate role, and it is worth keeping the two separate in your mind before you engage anyone.
How it differs from development management and due diligence
Three terms get used loosely. They are not the same thing.
Feasibility advisory is the viability function. Does the project stack up, and under what assumptions?
Development due diligence is the risk investigation, usually before you commit to a site or a deal. It asks what could go wrong and what the site is actually capable of, covering planning parameters and yield, title and legal constraints, contamination and physical limits, servicing and infrastructure, and the critical risks that could undermine the feasibility. Our separate guide on property due diligence for developers goes deeper on the investigation itself.
Development management, sometimes called project management, is the delivery function. It is running the project once you have committed: coordinating consultants, managing the approval, tendering and administering the building contract, and driving the job to completion.
Many firms offer all three, and some of the best feasibility advisors also manage projects. The point is not that these never overlap. It is that you should be clear which one you are buying. A development manager who is excellent at delivery is not automatically the right person to interrogate your numbers, and a sharp feasibility mind is not automatically the right person to run a site.
When engaging a feasibility advisor tends to pay off
A few situations where an independent view often earns its fee:
- Your first development, or your first in an unfamiliar asset class. Moving from townhouses into childcare, build-to-rent or aged care means modelling assumptions you have never tested. An advisor who knows that asset class can flag what you do not yet know to ask.
- Raising debt or equity. Banks, non-bank lenders and joint venture partners increasingly want an independent feasibility, or an independent view on the numbers, before they commit capital. As private credit takes a larger share of the development funding stack, the premium on a credible, independently tested feasibility has risen.
- A joint venture partner wants comfort. A disinterested party validating the deal can be what gets a partner across the line.
- An acquisition decision. The saying that profit is made at purchase is a cliché because it is usually true. An independent feasibility before you exchange may protect against overpaying, or against buying the wrong site altogether.
- A reality check on your own model. Even experienced developers use an external reviewer to catch optimism bias, a missing cost line, or sales evidence that has quietly gone stale.
What an independent feasibility review examines
A thorough review tends to work through:
- Assumptions. Are they current, and would they survive scrutiny from a lender or partner?
- Costings. Construction, professional fees, authority and statutory charges, finance and holding costs, and whether the contingency is realistic. This is where a quantity surveyor’s cost estimate usually feeds in.
- Revenue. Are the sales rates or end values backed by real comparable evidence, rather than national averages or last cycle’s figures?
- Finance structure. Gearing, interest, drawdown timing and the shape of the capital stack.
- Planning risk. Zoning, overlays, height and density controls, the approval pathway and how likely it is to land.
- Program. The timeline, and what it does to holding and finance costs.
- Sensitivity and scenarios. What happens if costs rise or sales soften, and whether the site is being put to its highest and best use. Our guide to sensitivity analysis covers this in more detail.
How feasibility advisors differ from quantity surveyors, valuers and planners
It is easy to assume the specialists you already engage cover this. They each own one input, not the whole model.
A quantity surveyor (QS) estimates and monitors construction cost, and lenders rely on QS cost reports and progress certification. They own the build cost, not the whole feasibility.
A valuer, specifically a Certified Practising Valuer (CPV), provides the end value or gross realisable value, and can run a residual land value analysis to cross-check what a site is worth. For lending and legal purposes, only a Certified Practising Valuer’s opinion of value is generally accepted.
A town planner establishes what can be built, and how risky the approval is. That yield and planning input is a critical feasibility assumption, but it is one input among many.
The feasibility advisor’s distinct job is to take all of those inputs, integrate them into one decision model, and pressure-test it commercially. The quantity surveyor, valuer and planner tell you the parts. The advisor tells you whether the whole thing works.
How feasibility advisors typically charge
These firms almost always price bespoke, and most do not publish rates. In general terms, you are likely to encounter one or a combination of the following.
A fixed-scope fee for a defined piece of work. This is the most common and most predictable model where the deliverable is clear, such as an independent review with a written assessment, sensitivity analysis, risk commentary and a go or no-go recommendation. A one-off review is usually the fastest and most affordable engagement.
Hourly or day rates. Used where the scope is open, or for a short diagnostic before a larger piece of work.
A monthly retainer. Common where you want ongoing advisory access across the life of a project rather than a single report.
A percentage of project cost. Where the engagement extends into delivery or development management, fees are often a percentage of construction or end cost that scales down as the project gets bigger. Pure feasibility work is less often priced this way.
Occasionally there is a success or contingent component, which is more common in site-sourcing or capital-raising mandates than in feasibility review.
What moves the price is size, complexity, asset class, the number of scenarios modelled and how deep the model needs to go. A lender-grade model with a full cash flow, return metrics and sensitivity testing is a bigger job than a quick margin check. Rather than fixate on a number, it tends to be more useful to agree the deliverable and the depth of modelling up front, then let the fee follow from that.
Working with an advisor and a feasibility platform
A lot of the cost and friction in this work is not the thinking. It is the spreadsheet. Much of an advisor’s time, and yours, can disappear into rebuilding, interpreting and reconciling a feasibility model that only its author fully understands. Every developer’s spreadsheet is laid out differently, and a reviewer often spends the first few hours just working out how someone else’s file hangs together before they can say anything useful about the actual numbers.
A shared, structured feasibility tool changes that dynamic. When an advisor and a developer are both working in the same consistent model, the conversation moves quickly to the assumptions that matter rather than the mechanics of the file. That consistency is part of the thinking behind Feasly. An advisor can prepare or review a feasibility inside Feasly and share it to your own account, so you keep a live, worked model rather than a static report. From there you can carry on yourself, flexing the inputs and modelling different funding stacks through your own developer lens, with the debt and equity sizing, loan to value and loan to cost positions, and margin scheme treatment all handled in a structure you and your advisor both recognise.
The value is consistency. The advisor’s logic stays visible, the model stays live, and the time that would otherwise go into deciphering a spreadsheet goes into the decision instead.
How to tell a genuine feasibility advisor from a development consultant
Feasibility is a slippery word. Engineers and town planners use it to mean planning or infrastructure feasibility. Agents use it loosely. Before you engage anyone, it is worth checking that financial development feasibility is a named, genuine part of what they do, not a line they have borrowed.
A few credibility markers worth looking for:
- Membership of the Australian Property Institute (API) and the Certified Practising Valuer (CPV) credential for anyone giving an opinion on value, along with the Institute’s development practitioner pathways.
- Membership of the Property Council of Australia (PCA) and the Urban Development Institute of Australia (UDIA), which signal genuine standing in the development industry.
- Accreditation with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) for valuation and feasibility professionals.
- For planning-led advisers, recognition from the Planning Institute of Australia (PIA).
None of these is a licence to give feasibility advice, because no such single licence exists. They are signals that a firm sits inside the professional mainstream rather than outside it.
Where to find feasibility advisory and due diligence in Australia
The market is deep in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, thinner in Western Australia and South Australia, and genuinely thin in Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory. In the smaller markets, the work is often handled by national firms, or by valuers and planners who add feasibility analysis to their core service.
The firms below are a starting point, not an endorsement. Each one describes feasibility, review or due diligence as a genuine part of what it does, but you should satisfy yourself on fit, asset class and current capability before engaging.
New South Wales
- Mecone is an urban planning, policy and development advisory consultancy with Sydney, Western Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne offices, working with developers, landowners and government, and partnering with property economists on feasibility.
- Atlas Economics is a property economics firm that provides development feasibility advice alongside infrastructure funding and affordable housing economics, advising developers, investors and consultants.
- 9Springs is an independent property investment, advisory and project management group offering strategy, feasibility, planning approvals and client-side development management across residential, industrial, commercial and social-infrastructure sectors.
Victoria
- Charter Keck Cramer is a national property advisory firm whose project feasibility studies test financial viability through gross realisation, sales and development cost analysis, and return testing. It is one of the stronger genuine financial-feasibility providers nationally.
- Point Polaris is a Melbourne development advisory boutique whose review service is built to test assumptions and validate a developer’s own feasibility. Where you already have a model, they will review it and provide commentary on the key assumptions and metrics, which is close to a textbook second set of eyes.
- Property Analytics specialises in low-rise residential development feasibility studies across Melbourne, working with both newer and experienced developers on knockdown rebuilds, dual occupancy, townhouse and subdivision projects.
Queensland
- Development Directive is a family-run, multi-disciplinary property development specialist based in Brisbane, with a Gold Coast office, offering town planning, project management, superintendent, urban design and development advisory services, with feasibility analysis and pre-acquisition due diligence at the front end across multi-residential, subdivision, commercial, large-format retail, industrial, retirement and aged care projects.
- HPC is a Brisbane and Gold Coast town planning and development consultancy whose advisory service includes feasibility studies establishing project revenue, cost, profit and development margin, plus independent pre-acquisition due diligence.
- McAndrew Group is a long-established Brisbane consultancy offering development feasibility reviews, due diligence and yield analysis to local, interstate and international developers.
Western Australia
- Bridge42 is a Perth-headquartered firm, with Sydney and Melbourne offices, that integrates property advisory, development strategy and project management, including feasibility, business cases and commercial frameworks, along with independent superintendency.
- Serling Consulting is a Perth land development consultancy that covers initial feasibility servicing and cost-estimate studies through planning and rezoning to construction. Its strengths sit on the civil and land development side, so it suits land and subdivision work more than vertical development modelling.
- Nirrep Property is a Perth development consultancy led by a director with long experience at major listed developers, offering development strategy, evaluation, review and value optimisation alongside development management.
South Australia
- m3property is a national valuation-led advisory with an Adelaide office, providing development feasibility analysis and acquisition due diligence for developers, financiers and government.
- Ekistics is an Adelaide urban planning consultancy that markets feasibility and due diligence alongside statutory approvals and master planning. Its work is more planning-led than pure financial modelling, which is worth bearing in mind depending on what you need.
South Australia’s genuinely specialist financial-feasibility work is often delivered by national firms servicing the state, or by valuers adding a residual land value analysis. Local boutiques focused purely on feasibility modelling are limited, so it is worth being clear about whether you need planning-led or finance-led input.
Tasmania
There is little resident specialist depth here. Tasmanian Valuation Services is a Hobart chartered valuation firm that offers feasibility studies and project management. Beyond that, most developer-grade feasibility advisory in the state is handled by mainland firms, or by valuers who add feasibility analysis to a valuation engagement.
Australian Capital Territory
Canberra is much the same. Purdon is a long-established Canberra urban consultancy that lists feasibility analysis, due diligence and funding strategy advice among its services, and has been recognised by the Planning Institute of Australia (PIA) for planning and economic feasibility analysis. National firms and accredited valuers service most other feasibility and business-case work in the territory.
Northern Territory
The Northern Territory is thinner again. Tatam Planning Co. is a Darwin town planning consultancy that offers feasibility and master planning to establish a site’s potential before purchase. Otherwise, feasibility in the territory is typically serviced by valuers and by interstate advisory firms, and there is no substantial pure feasibility boutique resident locally.
National firms servicing all states
Where a local specialist is thin, the national advisory firms prepare and review development feasibilities across the country. Savills runs a dedicated development feasibility, finance and funding team. Colliers, Cushman & Wakefield and JLL all offer development advisory and feasibility services as well. These tend to suit larger or more complex projects.
A practical way to use an advisor
An advisor is most useful when you give them something to react to, and when what you hand over is clear enough to interrogate quickly. Build your best version of the feasibility, be honest about the assumptions you are least sure of, and ask the advisor to attack those first. The engagement tends to be more productive, and cheaper, when the model is structured and the logic is visible rather than buried in a one-off spreadsheet that only you understand.
Whether you engage a national firm or a local boutique, the goal is the same. You want a feasibility you can defend to a lender, a partner or yourself, with the risks named rather than hidden.
Common questions
Is a feasibility advisor the same as a development manager?
No. A feasibility advisor assesses whether a project stacks up, and on what assumptions. A development manager runs the project once you have committed. Some firms do both, but they are different engagements and worth buying separately and deliberately.
Do I still need a feasibility advisor if I already use a quantity surveyor and a valuer?
Possibly. A quantity surveyor (QS) owns the construction cost, and a valuer owns the end value. Neither typically integrates every input into one model and pressure-tests the whole thing, which is the feasibility advisor’s role.
When is the best time to engage one?
Often before you exchange on a site, and again before you commit to finance. An independent feasibility at the acquisition stage tends to be where it protects the most value, because that is where the largest, least reversible decision is made.
How much does feasibility advisory cost?
It varies widely with size and complexity, and most firms price bespoke. A defined, fixed-scope review is usually the most predictable and affordable starting point. Agreeing the deliverable and the depth of modelling up front is the best way to keep the fee sensible.