A 204-unit Nevada multifamily: pricing a panel system against stick framing

What it is

A developer was carrying a 204-unit multifamily project in Nevada, two-story duplex buildings with a shared party wall, on a stick-framed budget, the assumption every contractor, appraiser and lender in that market already knows how to underwrite.

The manufacturer of a structural panel system that LÏEF prices and builds brought the project to LÏEF and asked for a budgetary comparison: the building framed conventionally against the building on the system. Because LÏEF had an interest in the low side, the comparison said so up front and held every constant where an outside reader could check it.

What Common Ground did

• LÏEF fixed the basis before pricing anything: slab plus structure, vertical construction only, with site work, amenities and off-site utilities out on both sides and finish allowances held identical, so any gap could only come from the structure.
• The stick side used the midpoint of the market's budgetary range for wood-frame multifamily, with the range printed beside it rather than treated as a hard bid.
• Fowler mapped what the system can physically touch (structural and roof framing, roof sheathing, roofing, siding, trim, exterior paint and wall insulation) and pinned everything else as unchanged on both sides.
• The system side was priced at full scope on the developer's own plan set, 102 two-story buildings of two dwellings each, replacing the manufacturer's sample-wall arithmetic.
• The variance was stated on the difference between the two, at subcontractor buyout, where a budgetary number meets the market.
• The deliverable stopped at a rate per square foot with its basis and variance. A project total was left for a measured quantity and a bottom-up trade build.
• LÏEF added two standing rules to its own estimating: a basis sheet in front of every system comparison, and a gate under which no project total leaves the shop as a rate multiplied by an area.

Results

• On identical scope, the panel system came in at $154.70 a square foot, system-adjusted, against the $167.50 stick-framed midpoint in January 2026, by a margin that held through its buyout variance.
• The gap was narrower than the width of the benchmark's own budgetary range, so the recommendation was a hard bid on both sides before anyone banked the number.
• The structural system choice stayed with the developer, made with the constants and the width of every number in view.

External links

• Public data room: A 204-unit multifamily: value engineering (Nevada, 2026) data room

At a glance