How Cortland Completed Preconstruction Before Closing on a $1.6B Portfolio

Industry

Multifamily

Challenge

Cortland needed to complete preconstruction for the Elme Portfolio — a 19-community, 5,759-unit acquisition before close so construction could start day one.

Results

Cortland started construction the day of close after completing preconstruction in 14 weeks. They also reported ~4% lower construction costs across the program.

Key Product

CapEx Orchestration Platform

cortland.com

$150M

renovation program

Cost Savings

55%

Faster Preconstruction

"Taking down a portfolio this size is rare. Tailorbird took a lot of the pain out of it, and we were in good shape to start construction the day we closed."

Clay Landers

Chief Construction Officer

"When I had first heard of Tailorbird, I thought, "There's no way their AI could look at photos and model all of these properties. There's just no chance that's possible." They proved me wrong."

Mike Altman

Chief Investment Officer, Cortland

"Tailorbird got us to the starting point for contracts. Now it's just minimal effort to get us where we need to be."

Paul Barranco

Director of Contract Administration

The Elme Portfolio: The largest acquisition in Cortland’s history

The Elme Portfolio was the largest acquisition in Cortland's history: $1.6B all-cash across metro Washington, D.C., Northern Virginia, and Atlanta, with a roughly $150M renovation program ahead.

Cortland is a NMHC Top 50 owner-operator with roughly 81,000 units and its own in-house construction and design teams. They renovate to a defined brand standard and hold their product to a precision most owners never ask for. The Elme Portfolio tested whether that standard could hold across all 19 communities at once, with pre-construction finished before close.

The Challenge

In value-add deals, the return is won in the gap between close and construction—every week of delay is idle capital and delayed rent lift. Speed on the front end is where the IRR math is won.

But preconstruction rarely starts early: applying a renovation standard requires unit-level condition data buyers can’t capture during diligence, so site walks and manual takeoffs force a slow, sequential process. That 6–9 month lag gets baked into underwriting and caps what an operator can bid.

Cortland set out to remove that lag entirely. The Elme portfolio tested whether that lag could be eliminated—not narrowed—at portfolio scale.

The Solution

Tailorbird enabled Cortland to run preconstruction before close by generating the portfolio’s unit-level conditions at scale.

The platform produced as-builts and takeoffs across all 19 communities in parallel, then applied Cortland’s design standards consistently and delivered execution-ready scopes/contract drafts for review—so the team could start from near-complete work instead of a blank page.

The Outcome

Pre-construction finished in 14 weeks, and construction began the day the deal closed.

AI-enabled preconstruction is a capability Cortland brings to every acquisition. Deals have the renovation program already scoped and the construction budgets priced against confirmed conditions. Across the roughly $150M Elme program, Cortland's renovation costs are running about 4% lower.

The speed and cost savings change the deal math: rents arrive six to nine months sooner, against costs confirmed before close. That lifts the return, and the price Cortland can bid and still clear its target.