McCooke Group

Viability is tightening. Clarity is becoming critical.

13 April 2026

2 min

Over the past few months, viability has moved from the background to the centre of every serious conversation about development. This is not simply a function of market anxiety. It reflects something more structural. Schemes that once felt self-evidently viable now require justification, and justification requires more than numbers.

The data bears this out. Recent analysis from Molior shows that while sales and starts in London have improved in early 2026, both remain well below the levels needed to support delivery at scale. Institutional buyers are increasingly driving what activity exists, with developers relying on rental exits and bulk deals to get schemes across the line. The forward pipeline is thinning. Fewer starts now means fewer completions ahead. Capital has not disappeared, but it is being deployed with far greater selectivity.

That selectivity changes how decisions are made. Schemes are no longer assessed in isolation. They are compared against other opportunities, other risk profiles, other management teams, all competing for the same cautious capital. In that environment, the threshold for moving forward is higher, and the tolerance for ambiguity is lower.

This is where many schemes begin to fail. Not because the fundamentals are wrong, but because they are difficult to read. Viability is often technically sound. The appraisals stack up. The assumptions are defensible. But the information is scattered across documents that were never designed to be interrogated together, and the picture that emerges is incomplete, inconsistent, or simply hard to follow.

The market is not short of schemes. It is short of clearly understood ones.

That creates friction. And in a more selective environment, friction is costly. When capital is cautious, anything that slows comprehension or introduces doubt, even briefly, becomes a factor. Investors and funders are not looking for reasons to say no. But they will find them faster than before.

Viability on its own is no longer sufficient. It needs to be understood quickly, interrogated easily, and trusted without reservation. That means the numbers, the risk, the return, and the structure all need to be set out in a way that makes immediate, coherent sense, not just to those who built the appraisal, but to those who are deciding whether to back it.

When that is done well, viability stops being a calculation and becomes a case. It earns confidence rather than simply requesting it. And in a market defined by comparison and selectivity, that distinction is where decisions are made.

Clarity is not a presentation problem. It is a commercial one. The schemes moving forward right now are not always the strongest. They are the ones that are easiest to say yes to.

David McCooke