What a feasibility study is, and isn't
A development feasibility study is the complete underwriting of a site. It takes one parcel and resolves the only question that matters before money is committed: should anything be built here, and if so, what? Its output is one answer, build, sell or wait, backed by the full reasoning: capacity, design, cost and capital, held together so a lender or a board can check the answer rather than take it on trust.
It is not a pro forma. A pro forma is a single financial projection of one assumed building; the feasibility study is the larger question that produces the pro forma as one of its outputs. It is not a market study either: a market study reads demand, rents and absorption, which the feasibility study consumes as an input rather than its conclusion. The point of the study is the synthesis: the place where the building, the approval path, the rents the zone supports and the financing are made to agree on a single number, or shown that they cannot.
Because the stages of a development are interdependent, a decision in design can break the financing and an approval constraint can rule out the unit mix the rents needed, the highest-leverage moment in the whole arc is the first read. By the time design begins, the parcel's capacity, the path through approvals and the achievable economics are largely fixed. The feasibility study is where they get fixed deliberately, rather than discovered one expensive stage at a time. For the full arc this study sits at the front of, see how development works in Halifax.
| 01What can the parcel support? | The zoning and its overlays: height, frontage, setbacks, coverage, heritage and floodplain. |
|---|---|
| 02What should be built on it? | The approval path and its length; the building the site can carry, its unit mix and structure. |
| 03Does the money close? | The template and the builder's price; the lender's rule and the rents the zone supports. |
| 04Should it be built at all? | Build, sell or wait, with the reasoning a lender or a board can check. |
A schematic of the method, not a project record; no figure in it is measured. The record each question reads is named in its row.
What can this parcel support?
The first question is the parcel's development capacity: its zoning, the permitted height, heritage and floodplain status, and the density-bonus envelope the zone may allow. This is the constraint everything downstream inherits, so it has to be read precisely.
Capacity is a property of the specific parcel, not a lookup-table number. Two lots in the same zone can support very different buildings once setbacks, frontage, grade, heritage overlays and the bonus rules are applied. That is why a feasibility study reads capacity for the specific parcel rather than quoting a figure off a zone label. The official zoning reference for any HRM property is the municipality's own ExploreHRM; for the underlying concepts, the as-of-right and density-bonusing definitions frame what the study resolves into a number. For an ER-3 lot the count is on the record already: what your lot allows in Halifax.
The capacity read also sets the approval path, whether the project moves as of right or needs a development agreement, which in turn sets the schedule and the risk the rest of the study has to price.
What should be built here?
A single parcel can become an enormous number of different buildings. The right one is not found by drawing a scheme and testing it; it is resolved by treating capacity, programme, unit mix, structure and cost as one coupled problem and testing configurations against the objectives the owner has set for the site.
This is the part that does not fit a by-hand process: the search space is too large to walk, and the variables loop. Unit mix moves structure, structure moves cost, cost moves financing, financing moves back to unit mix. A few schemes can be tested in a few weeks of senior time, and the configurations nobody drew are never priced. Helio's technology tests configurations across that space and prices them against the record of developments it tracks across the city, so what reaches the owner is the set where the building, the money and the delivery route agree.
The result is a specific building, its massing, its unit mix, its structural system, not a vague range. That specificity is what makes the next two questions answerable.
Does the money close?
With a specific building resolved, the study tests whether it can be financed and whether the economics hold at the rents the zone supports. That means assembling the capital stack, debt and equity, and checking program fitness where it applies.
For multi-unit rental the most consequential program is often CMHC MLI Select, whose points system can unlock higher leverage and longer amortisation in exchange for affordability, energy and accessibility commitments. Whether a project should reach for those points, and which ones it can credibly commit to without breaking the pro forma, is itself a question the study resolves. The stack either clears at the achievable rents, or it doesn't, and the study says which, with the reasoning attached.
This is where the difference between a study and a pro forma is sharpest. A pro forma assumes a building and projects its numbers; the study asks whether that building should have been the one assumed in the first place, and re-solves if the stack will not clear.
Should it be built at all?
The final question is the honest one. After capacity, the resolved design and the capital stack are settled, the study returns build, sell or wait, and a no is a real, valuable answer.
A study that says a project should not proceed has saved months of effort and a great deal of capital that would otherwise have been spent learning the same thing the slow way. The document is yours either way, with the full reasoning intact, written so a lender or a board can read it. Whether the project goes further is the owner's decision; the feasibility study is what that decision gets made on, before commitment rather than after.
What you receive
The deliverable is a complete, inspectable underwriting of the site: the capacity read, the resolved building, the capital stack and the answer, each backed by the reasoning that produced it. Read as a whole, it states what the parcel could support, what a project on it would require, how the economics look and which questions remain open. It is written to be read by the people who decide: a lender's credit committee, a board, a co-investor.
For a development-capital partner weighing a deal, the same document is the basis for an inspectable read of the underwriting rather than a pitch to be taken on trust, the basis the capital partners relationship is built on. The study is yours regardless of the verdict.
Feasibility vs. pro forma vs. market study
These three are often conflated. They sit at different scopes, and a feasibility study contains the other two.
When someone asks what the difference is between a feasibility study and a pro forma, this is the short version: the pro forma answers how do the numbers look for this building; the feasibility study answers which building, and should it exist.
What Helio does, and what happens next
With Helio the study is the defined first engagement. The fee is for the work, not a share of the building: you own the land and the finished building throughout, and the build is run by Helio on a design it has worked out for your lot, or, on the ER-3 programme, by Kulak Construction in partnership with Helio.
An ER-3 lot gets its reading by e-mail within one business day, from the ER-3 programme. Any other parcel starts with a defined, fixed-fee study, quoted after the first conversation. You do not need a finished plan to start; you need a site and a question.
Have a parcel and a timeline? Tell us about it, and the first conversation sets the study's scope.
Start with the projectWhat your lot allows in Halifax
Four to eight units on an ER-3 lot, set by the lot's area; every lot the zone covers is on the record.
How development works in Halifax
The six stages from parcel to occupancy, the arc this study sits at the front of.
Does our project qualify for MLI Select
The program whose fitness the money question resolves, and what its points do to the loan.
Figures in this guide carry their date and source; method and limits of the underlying map data are on the methodology page. Spotted an error? Correct a record.