Methodological approaches to assessing the effectiveness of development strategies for real estate developer enterprises

Abstract

The paper synthesizes scholarly approaches to assessing the effectiveness of developer enterprises’ development strategies and substantiates methodological principles for building a performance measurement system that integrates investment, financial, market, process, and regulatory criteria. The relevance of the topic is driven by the high capital intensity of development programs, the portfolio nature of projects, the dependence of cash flows on construction and sales pace, and the tightening requirements for management transparency and compliance with urban planning and investment regulations during the recovery process. It is shown that reducing evaluation to final financial outcomes or monitoring isolated project indicators fails to capture the multi-criteria nature of a developer’s strategic objectives and increases the risk of adopting decisions that are formally profitable yet liquidity-unstable or compliance-vulnerable.

The study aims to develop a generalized methodological approach to evaluating a developer’s strategy effectiveness based on strategic management accounting and multi-criteria monitoring. The methodological framework includes logical and comparative analysis, systematization, generalization, structuring, and elements of applied project analysis. Strategy effectiveness is interpreted as the degree of achievement of strategic goals over time, subject to liquidity and risk constraints, legal compliance requirements, and the ability to maintain portfolio controllability. The need to cascade strategy into a KPI system and management reporting by responsibility centers, supported by regular plan–fact analysis, is substantiated as a means of ensuring repeatability of evaluation and reducing managerial subjectivity.

A system of indicators is structured across five dimensions: investment-financial (investment performance, cost of capital, financial resilience), market-marketing (demand, sales/lease absorption, customer trust), operational-process (schedule adherence, budget and quality control), risk-security (shock resilience, reserves, economic security), and compliance–regulatory (regulatory adherence, transparency, legal certainty). The feasibility of applying a “dual filter” evaluation is demonstrated: an initial test of solvency and cash-flow resilience in each period of implementation, followed by comparison of alternatives in terms of profitability and total cost of capital. The practical value lies in applying the proposed provisions to develop internal regulations for strategic management accounting, KPI systems, and procedures for periodic review of strategy and the project portfolio in developer companies.