Building & Real Estate

RCOR was hired by a housing developer that produces units for rent and sale, with income generated at the completion of each phase of site work. The developer had created an Excel model to analyze expected returns on new developments, including a sensitivity analysis, but found that the file was running too slowly and freezing up every time changes were made. The file contained around 20 tabs with many formulas linked to one another, causing Excel to recalculate thousands of formulas unnecessarily. To improve the efficiency of the file, RCOR worked with the client to understand how it was being used. It was discovered that users were mostly entering data on a single sheet with information about various houses and apartments. To define each unit, users were entering around 20 pieces of information, causing Excel to recalculate every time. RCOR modified the file to only refresh the outputs when the user navigated away from the input screen to view the outputs, and they also removed formulas on some output tabs and used code to perform the calculations instead, which further sped up the file and made it more robust.