Developers have always faced a familiar bottleneck: determining whether a project pencils before committing serious time and capital. Traditional feasibility studies are slow, expensive, and often outdated by the time they’re delivered, leaving smaller firms especially exposed as market conditions shift beneath them.

Now AI is starting to change that equation. By compressing weeks of analysis into days and dramatically lowering costs, new tools are making sophisticated feasibility modeling more accessible—particularly for small and midsized teams that lack in-house analytics but are increasingly pursuing complex, mixed-use projects.

If the technology delivers on its promise, the implications go beyond efficiency. Faster, cheaper feasibility could reshape who gets to build, what gets built, and where capital flows—opening the door to more mixed-use and affordable housing projects driven by local developers rather than only institutional players.

Milan's new Olympic Village is opening this week for the 2026 Winter Games with a clear plan for what happens after the athletes leave. The 1,700-bed complex on the former Porta Romana rail yard was designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill specifically to become student housing once the Olympics end. The village will be handed back to the city immediately after the games and converted to student residences in just four months, ready for the 2026-2027 academic year. The units will stay largely as they are, with private bathrooms, kitchenettes and quality furniture instead of the cardboard beds that made headlines at recent Olympics. About 30% of the units will be offered at subsidized rates averaging €430 per month, roughly 25% below market pricing.

Milan has a serious student housing shortage. The city is home to multiple universities but lacks affordable housing for the roughly 200,000 students who study there. The Olympic Village will meet around 6% of that demand with 1,700 beds, plus another 320 affordable housing units in adjacent buildings on the same site. The project has been pre-qualified by Italy's Ministry of Universities for public funding that could reduce rents even further for up to 12 years. The development includes two restored historic railway buildings and sits within a larger urban regeneration effort at Porta Romana that includes shops, cafes, and green spaces. The design prioritizes environmental performance with LEED Gold certification, mass timber construction, heat pumps instead of fossil fuels, a 1 MW solar array, and stormwater reuse systems.

The Milan approach shows how Olympic construction can avoid the persistent problem that's plagued past host cities. Instead of building facilities that sit empty or require expensive retrofits after the games, Milan designed for student housing from the start and picked a location where that use makes sense long-term. The units need minimal changes to work for students, which skips the emissions-intensive process of gutting and rebuilding interiors. The model could reshape how cities think about Olympic infrastructure and other major event construction. Build for the second use first, not as an afterthought. Similar thinking could apply to convention centers, temporary hospital facilities, or corporate campuses built for specific events. We could see more projects designed with built-in flexibility for multiple lifecycles, reducing waste and ensuring developments serve community needs beyond their original purpose.

Realtor.com delivered strong financial results in News Corp's second quarter, providing a rare bright spot for the media conglomerate as it navigates broader industry headwinds. Move Inc., which operates Realtor.com, reported $143 million in quarterly revenue, up 10% year-over-year for the three months ending December 31. The growth came from higher sales of premium products like RealPRO Select, along with growth in seller, new-construction and rental offerings. Lead volume jumped 13% from a year earlier. News Corp's overall revenue climbed 6% to $2.36 billion, with digital real estate contributing alongside Dow Jones and book publishing.

Realtor.com CEO Damian Eales pointed to rising audience share and what he called the most engaged audience in the industry as evidence that focusing on engagement and revenue per lead can work even when the housing market is struggling. The platform competes in a residential search market dominated by Zillow, which attracted roughly 67 million combined monthly visitors across Zillow and Trulia in 2024, compared to Realtor.com's approximately 30 million. CoStar's Homes.com has emerged as an aggressive third player after CoStar invested $1 billion in the platform since purchasing it in 2021. Homes.com claimed 104 million monthly unique visitors in the first quarter of 2025, though those numbers have drawn skepticism from competitors who question the methodology. Eales also highlighted Realtor.com+, a home search product that launched in January and integrates directly into MLS systems while preserving agent, brokerage and MLS branding.

The results show there's still room for multiple players to grow in residential real estate tech, even as market share remains heavily concentrated. Realtor.com's 10% revenue growth came despite a housing market that remains sluggish, with elevated mortgage rates and affordability concerns holding back transaction volumes. The company's strategy of selling higher-value premium products rather than competing solely on traffic volume appears to be working. The launch of Realtor.com+ represents a bet on industry collaboration over winner-take-all competition, positioning the platform as an MLS-friendly alternative to portals that keep leads behind their own walls. Whether that approach can close the gap with Zillow's traffic numbers remains to be seen, but the revenue growth shows Realtor.com doesn't need to win the visitor count war to make money.

Propmodo Daily is written and edited by Franco Faraudo with contributions from readers like you and the Propmodo team.

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