Sheet 00 · Questions
How GroundUp WNY works, in plain terms
Western New York real estate, underwritten parcel by parcel. These are the questions investors, developers, builders and tenants ask us most often: what the platform does, what it costs, where the numbers come from, and who sees your information.
The platform
What is GroundUp WNY?
GroundUp WNY is a real estate deal platform for Western New York. It takes a parcel or a vacant building in Erie or Niagara County and turns it into a working pro forma: zoning and overlay districts, incentive programs, rent comparables and construction cost benchmarks. From there it holds the whole deal in one place, from the capital stack through construction milestones.
Who is it built for?
Three sides of the same transaction. Investors putting capital to work in Western New York, developers and builders putting shovels in the ground, and commercial tenants and their brokers looking for space. Each side gets its own tools on the same project record, so nobody is re-keying the same numbers into a different spreadsheet.
Which counties and neighborhoods do you cover?
Erie and Niagara counties, including Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Tonawanda, Kenmore, Amherst, Lackawanna and Cheektowaga. The underwriting engine is built around these markets, so the comparables and cost benchmarks it pulls reflect what things actually cost and rent here rather than a national average.
What does it cost to use?
Browsing the platform and running parcel underwriting is free for signed-in users. GroundUp WNY charges a 2% placement fee on capital that is committed through the platform, which is invoiced to the sponsor side of the transaction. Sponsors can also pay for a featured placement, which pins a deal to the top of the deal feed for 30 days.
Do I need an account to look at a deal?
Individual deals can be shared as public pages, so a link to a deal's economics opens for anyone whether they have signed in or not. The working platform behind it, including documents, allocations and matching, requires an account.
Who can see my information?
Your capital profile, your requirements and any allocation you reserve are visible to you and to the GroundUp WNY team. Private deal documents and the prospecting pipeline are restricted to platform administrators. Nothing you enter into a capital profile is published to other users of the platform.
For investors
What is on a deal page?
The business plan and the sponsor's track record, the full pro forma including total project cost and stabilized net operating income, rent comparables with their sources, the capital stack showing who is providing what on which terms, the deal documents the sponsor has released, and a milestone timeline as construction progresses.
What is the minimum investment?
Each sponsor sets their own minimum, and it is shown on the deal page before you do anything else. The platform default is $25,000. There is no maximum other than what remains in the allocation.
How does reserving an allocation work?
You state the amount you want to reserve and it is recorded against the deal as reserved, then moves to soft committed and funded as the paperwork and the wire catch up. The deal page shows how much of the equity raise is already committed, so you can see how much room is left before you start a conversation.
Who underwrites the numbers, you or the sponsor?
Both, and you can tell them apart. Sponsor-provided figures, including the rent roll and the capital stack, are labeled as sponsor supplied. The zoning read, the incentive screening, the comparables and the cost benchmarks come from the underwriting engine, which rates its own confidence from high to low on each parcel. Anything that carries a low confidence rating is flagged for you to verify with the municipality.
Does GroundUp WNY sell securities?
No. Nothing on this platform is an offer to sell securities. Deals are sponsor-provided market information, and every introduction between an investor and a sponsor is made by a person. Review all materials with your own advisors before committing capital.
What is a verified introduction?
Before an investor is introduced to a sponsor, a member of the GroundUp WNY team checks both sides: that the sponsor and the project are real, and that the investor is who they say they are. Accreditation is self-certified by the investor at sign-up and reviewed by the team. It is a filter against cold outreach and time wasting, not a substitute for your own diligence.
For developers, builders and owners
What does the underwriting engine actually produce for a parcel?
Enter an address and it returns the zoning district and what it allows, overlay districts, incentive programs with their benefit and eligibility, the school district, a highest-and-best-use recommendation, rent comparables, construction cost benchmarks, a pro forma with total project cost, stabilized NOI, projected IRR and cash-on-cash, and a written list of the risks it sees. Every parcel carries a confidence rating.
How reliable is that data?
It is a starting point built to save you the first three days of research, not a substitute for a zoning opinion or a contractor's bid. The engine rates its confidence on each parcel and tells you what it could not confirm. Zoning interpretations and incentive eligibility always come down to the municipality, so treat the output as the first draft of your own analysis.
Can I post a deal without running the engine?
Yes. Sponsors can enter a project by hand with their own address, asset class, stage, capital stack, pro forma and documents, and publish it to the feed themselves. Engine-sourced deals are labeled separately so nobody mistakes an automated first pass for a reviewed submission.
How do builders get work on the platform?
Builders post a capacity profile with their trades, crew size, service areas, availability window, cost-per-square-foot range and years active. Sponsors and the GroundUp WNY team can then request a bid package for a specific project, and the request shows up on the builder's profile. Builders can also archive completed work with square footage, cost per square foot and a reference contact.
Can I pay to feature my deal?
Yes. A featured placement pins the deal to the top of the deal feed for 30 days. Paid placement changes position in the feed only. It does not change how a deal is labeled, whether it has been verified, or how the numbers are presented.
Do you work with out-of-market sponsors?
The underwriting is built for Erie and Niagara counties, so a sponsor from outside Western New York is welcome as long as the project is here and they have a local team or a clear plan to build one. Local builders and general contractors are a large part of what makes a project credible to investors on this platform.
For tenants and brokers
How does the commercial board work?
You post a requirement: the use type, the square footage range, the neighborhoods you will consider, your maximum rent, your build-out needs and your timeline. The platform matches it against projects in the pipeline that will have square footage to fill, including buildings that are still in entitlement or construction, which is where the best deals usually get done.
What does it cost to post a requirement?
Nothing. Posting and matching is free for tenants and their brokers. There is no listing fee, and you are not committed to anything by posting a requirement.
Can my broker manage it for me?
Yes. Requirements record the brokerage and the contact for the party that is handling the search, and the contact does not have to be the person using the site. Matches and replies go to whoever is listed on the requirement.
Still have a question, or a parcel you want looked at?
Contact the team