Comparison
An Affordable ARGUS Alternative
A browser-based commercial real estate underwriting model: tenant-by-tenant cash flow, recoveries, rollover, percentage rent, debt and exit, a reader for the offering memorandum, and a portal that keeps every deal from the first read to the years after closing. What it does as well as the licensed product, and the four things it deliberately does not do.
ARGUS Enterprise is the standard for institutional commercial real estate cash flow, and for good reason: it is deep, it is consistent, and when a lender or an appraiser asks for a file, they mean an ARGUS file. It is also sold by quote rather than by price list, which means most of the people who need to underwrite a deal, a broker checking an offering memorandum, an analyst pricing a strip center on a Sunday, a private buyer with three assets, never get near a seat.
CREMODEL is the option for that work. It runs a monthly, tenant-by-tenant discounted cash flow: the rent roll, recoveries per lease, rollover with downtime, tenant improvements and leasing commissions, operating expenses you can move line by line and year by year, fixed or floating debt sized against LTC, LTV, DSCR and debt yield, a refinance, and an exit. The model, OMAI Scan, which reads the offering memorandum into it, and the portal, which keeps the deal, its versions and the building after closing, come with an account on one plan.
Open the model. It opens blank so you can put your own deal straight in, or on one of the filled-in templates below. Drop an offering memorandum on it and the reader fills the sheet, every figure tied to the page it came from.
Open the model →Where it matches ARGUS, and where it does not
The honest version of this comparison is short: the modeling overlaps a great deal, the institutional plumbing does not.
| CREMODEL | ARGUS Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | One plan, priced by reads a month on the plans page, covers the model, OMAI Scan and the portal; no seat license, no annual contract, cancel any time. | Not published. Altus Group quotes per customer; practitioners report a few thousand dollars per user per year, plus maintenance. |
| How you get in | Open the page and sign in with an email. No install. | Sales contact, quote, contract, install, training. |
| Discounted cash flow | Monthly engine, up to a 15-year hold, annual and monthly statements, forward or trailing NOI at the exit. | Yes, the industry standard, and deeper. |
| Tenant-by-tenant rent roll | Each suite carries size, rent, commencement, free rent, term, fixed or CPI-indexed increases with a floor and ceiling, dated rent steps, a written option, percentage rent with a natural or stated breakpoint and sales growth, and a forced vacate. | Yes, with more clause-level depth. |
| Recoveries | Per lease: NNN, base year, gross, or a fixed CAM charge with growth; an admin fee; excluded lines; a flat cap or a growth cap, cumulative or year over year, on controllable lines or every line; a pro rata share override; expenses that move with occupancy, grossed up to 95%; capital amortized and billed through CAM to all tenants, the shops or the anchors. | Yes, including custom pools and gross-ups. |
| Rollover and market leasing | Per profile: market rent and its growth, renewal probability, downtime, term, TI and commission for new against renewal, free rent for new against renewal, weighted per lease. | Yes, the same shape as ARGUS market leasing assumptions. |
| Expenses | Nine CAM lines, taxes, insurance, non-recoverable and the vacant carry; changes by line and year; a reassessment on the purchase at an effective rate. | Yes. |
| Residential | Unit mix, turnover cost, loss to lease, a renovation program, other income, and mixed use in the same model. | Yes, through the multifamily module. |
| Debt | Fixed or floating on a benchmark plus spread, a rate cap, interest-only, sizing to LTC, LTV, DSCR or debt yield, extensions, prepayment structures, a line of credit, a second position, a refinance mid-hold. | Yes, and deeper on portfolio-level debt. |
| Development | Add a pad or a building mid-hold: cost, delivery month, the lease it opens on. | Yes, through ARGUS Developer. |
| The document | OMAI Scan reads the offering memorandum into the model, every figure tied to the page it came from; a rent roll or a T-12 can be pasted in as well. | Yes, plus native data feeds. |
| Reporting | A twenty-one page investment report and an Excel workbook on your letterhead, from the numbers on screen; an investor letter and an asset review after closing. | Yes, with a wider library of reports. |
| The portal | Every deal saved, versioned and staged from underwriting to purchased; a house standard applied across the pipeline; a deal locked at closing and tracked against its underwriting year by year. | Yes, through the enterprise platform. |
| Where your data goes | Saved deals live in your account. A read is processed on our servers and the document itself is not kept. | Files on your machine or in Altus’ cloud, depending on deployment. |
| File exchange with lenders and appraisers | No. There is no .AE file. Export is PDF, Excel, CSV and a link. | Yes. The .AE file is what institutional counterparties ask for. |
| Portfolio consolidation | No. Deals are tracked one at a time in the pipeline; there is no consolidated portfolio cash flow. | Yes. Roll-up across hundreds of assets. |
| Permissions and audit | Versions and a lock on every deal; one account per person. No permissions model and no certified audit trail. | Yes. Built for teams under audit. |
| Valuation certification | No. A screening and underwriting tool. | Yes. The accepted standard in institutional valuation. |
Be clear about the last four rows. If your deal has to be handed to an appraiser, a rating agency or a fund administrator in a form they will accept, or if you are consolidating a portfolio, or if your process has to survive an audit, you need the licensed product. Nothing at this price replaces the .AE file, because the file is the point. This model is for the work that happens before that, and for the many deals that never need it at all.
What you actually get
A real rent roll, not an average rent. Every suite carries its own size, base rent, commencement, free rent, term, increases, recovery structure, allowance, commission and renewal odds. A gross tenant pays nothing into the recovery pool and the landlord absorbs its share, which is where a lot of quick spreadsheets quietly overstate net operating income.
Recoveries the way the leases write them. NNN, base year, gross or a fixed charge; an admin fee; the lines a tenant does not pay; a cap on controllable expenses, flat or growing, compounding or year over year from the cap in place today; a share of CAM that moves with occupancy and is grossed up; and a roof or a parking lot amortized and billed back to the tenants who owe it.
Rollover that costs money. At expiry a lease renews or it does not. If it does not, you carry downtime, you give free rent, you pay a new allowance and you pay a new commission. The model charges all four, weighted by the renewal odds, and it charges the renewal allowance and commission on the renewals too.
Expenses you can move by year. One growth rate if that is all you need, or a change on any line in any year: taxes reassessed on the purchase, insurance repricing after a storm year, a contract rolling off. Every line shows the dollars next to the per-square-foot figure, in the cash flow statement and in the report.
Debt that behaves like debt. Fixed or floating, quoted the way a lender quotes it: a benchmark, the 5, 7 or 10-year Treasury, SOFR, Prime or your own number, plus a spread. Interest-only periods, 30/360 or actual/360, extension fees, prepayment structures, a line, a second position, and a refinance mid-hold with the cash-out flowing through the returns.
The document read into the model. OMAI Scan takes the offering memorandum apart page by page: the roll, the leases, the recoveries, the statement, the market rents and the price, each figure tied to the page it came from and each arithmetic screen shown. What it could not read is left blank, never guessed.
The building after closing. Lock the deal at closing and the sheet becomes the scorecard: the actual NOI, capital and debt service typed in year by year against what was underwritten, an investor letter and an asset review printed from the same numbers, for the life of the hold.
Simple enough to start, deep enough to finish
The model opens on one screen with the inputs that matter: price, size, rent, the loan, the exit. That is enough to price a deal in a minute. Every layer beneath it sits behind a checkbox or an optional group, per-suite leases, CPI increases, fixed CAM, percentage rent, expense changes, reassessment, the second position, the refinance, so a plain deal stays a plain sheet and a complex one is the same file with more boxes ticked. Someone underwriting for a REIT can open all of it.
One plan. The model, OMAI Scan and the portal are on one plan, priced by reads a month, with no seat license and no annual contract.
Open the model →Common questions
- Is there an affordable alternative to ARGUS?
- For underwriting, yes. CREMODEL runs a monthly, tenant-by-tenant discounted cash flow with recoveries, rollover, percentage rent, tenant improvements, leasing commissions, debt and an exit, in the browser, priced by reads of the offering memorandum with no seat license. It is not a replacement for ARGUS Enterprise in institutional valuation, where the .AE file and the audit trail are the point.
- What does ARGUS Enterprise cost?
- Altus Group does not publish pricing; every quote is custom. Practitioners on public forums report a few thousand dollars per user per year depending on tier and volume, with annual maintenance and support on top, and implementation, migration and training beyond that. Discounts are common at volume.
- Can I open an ARGUS file in CREMODEL?
- No. There is no .AE import or export. What you can do is read the underlying document: OMAI Scan takes the offering memorandum and fills the suites, the leases, the expenses and the price, each figure tied to its page, and a rent roll or a trailing twelve can be pasted in as well.
- Is CREMODEL accurate enough to underwrite a real deal?
- It is built to screen and underwrite: a monthly engine, per-lease recoveries with caps and gross-up, real rollover with downtime and re-leasing cost, loan sizing against LTC, LTV, DSCR and debt yield, and a printable cash flow statement that ties to the report and the Excel. It is a screening and underwriting tool, not a certified valuation product, and it is not investment advice. Check the output before you act on it.
- Do I need an account?
- The model runs without one. An account keeps your deals, their versions and your house standard in the portal, and it is where OMAI Scan and the reports live. A read is processed on our servers and the document itself is not kept.
Templates and related notes
- Strip center template , a stabilized center with credit pads and real rollover
- Grocery anchored template , anchor, shops, percentage rent and co-tenancy
- Multifamily template , unit mix, turnover cost and loss to lease
- Reading an Offering Memorandum , what the broker's numbers leave out
- DSCR, LTV and Debt Yield , which test actually sizes your loan