Last week I wrote a blog about how historically aggressive private money commercial bridge lenders are getting.  This month George Smith Partners, the big commercial mortgage banking company (the original founder started George Smith & Company decades before I founded Blackburne & Sons forty years ago) released a newsletter, FinFacts, containing the following tombstone:

“George Smith Partners (“GS P”) placed a $10,900,000 non-recourse loan for the refinance of an underperforming stabilized 50-unit multifamily community in Los Angeles.  The Sponsor recently acquired the asset at approximately 50% below market from an affiliate party, and GSP was able to facilitate approximately $3,000,000in cash out proceeds at closing.”

“A portion of the loan proceeds will be used to renovate units as they become vacant in order to achieve current market rents.  GSP identified a non-institutional lender (private money lender) who was comfortable with the cash out proceeds and who understood the history and dynamics of this non-arms-length acquisition.  The non-recourse loan is fixed for 1.5 years with a 7.99% interest rate and 4.99% pay rate.”

Terms:

Interest Rate:  7.99% with 4.99% pay rate
Term:  18 months
LTV:  70%
Recourse:  Carve-Outs Only
Fees:  1.0%
Prepayment:  None; no exit fee

The reason I brought this closing to your attention is because the Big Girls (the originator of this commercial loan at GSP was a lady) are arranging large commercial bridge loans with less than interest-only payments.

Article Provided By By George Blackburne

Nearly a decade ago, there was a foreclosure crisis. Realtors were buying old houses and flipping them. Now, the strategy is to buy new and rent out. This new asset class that is taking the private equity market by storm. It started in Arizona, spread to the Sunbelt, and is now spreading across the country.

This new real estate asset class; a class of real estate that competes with apartment buildings, office buildings, and shopping centers; is the build-to-rent community (“B2R”).  A build-to-rent community is a tract of brand new single-family homes that is constructed, not to be sold, but rather to be rented out to residential tenants.  The tract of, say, 60 homes, is then professionally managed and sold to an institutional investor as a reliable source of income.

My friends at George Smith Partners recently published the following tombstone:

George Smith Partners successfully advised on $12,000,000 in joint venture equity financing and $23,900,000 in non-recourse senior construction financing for the ground-up development of a 185-home build-to-rent community.  Single-family-for-rent communities are a newer asset class and this project was among the first in the market.  These communities offer the experience of living in a single-family home with the ease and cost of living in an apartment building.

The Sponsor expects the project to be well received as there are distinct competitive advantages over the existing apartment product in the market place for several reasons including the new construction, low density and both interior and exterior privacy.

Institutional real estate investors absolutely love this new class of real estate.  The homes in B2R communities usually rent at significant premiums anywhere from 15% to 30% above equivalent-size apartments or single-family rental homes, located in traditional for-sale neighborhoods.

B2R communities typically lease three to five times faster than traditional multifamily housing.  Developers report strong pre-lease periods, often ending up with a waiting list.  Typically all of the homes are rented in three to four months, versus ten to fourteen months for multifamily.

Another reason institutional investors love B2R communities is because the homes are brand new.  Because these home are brand new, they are usually immune from some of the typical repair factors that come in at 15 or 20 years of ownership.  There is a general contractor warranty.  There is also a limited product warranty of the appliances.  The only major operating expense for landlords is the landscaping.

Rents for single-family homes are growing fast at 4.5% annually now, compared with 3% rent growth for multifamily apartments.  There is also much less turnover in single-family rentals, and the rental market is much less volatile than the home sales market.  People will always need a place to live.

Renters are also digging these new B2R communities.  The huge millennial generation is aging into marriage and parenthood.  Not all of them want, or can afford, to buy a home.

Most of these B2R communities are pet-friendly and include a resort-style pool and spa, a covered ramada, walking paths, optional garages, and an electric-charging station.  They often offer the highest available Internet speeds.  The pool, exercise facilities, and planned social activities bring residents together, which doesn’t always happen in apartment buildings.  The homes often offer keyless entry and tablet-controlled security, climate control, and entertainment systems.  There are sometimes even smart front gates at the communities.

Institutional investors are learning that there is a cultural move away from your typical garden apartment with elevators, swimming pools, tennis courts and common areas. Homeownership is looking less desirable to some, particularly in the affordable arena, and renters now have a chance, for very close to the same price, to rent a three-bedroom, two-bath or a four-bedroom, three-bath home that they can call their own.

The renters obviously don’t own their home, but as long as they pay their rent and behave like good neighbors, they can reasonably expect to live there for twenty years.  The stigma associated with renting, along with the historical drive toward homeownership, is waning.

The American Dream is changing.  The last recession hurt a lot of people, and homeownership is at a 20-year low.  Most single-family renters fall into one of two categories:  Baby Boomers who are downsizing and Millennials.

Millennials are often saddled with large amounts of student-loan debt, and they either can’t or won’t buy a home.  Renting affords them a more mobile lifestyle.  The same goes for Boomers, many of whom lost their homes to foreclosure during the recession and are gun-shy about purchasing another.

B2R communities satisfy these renters’ need for a single-family home, and the landlord takes care of the exterior maintenance to boot.  It’s a unique lock-and-leave, managed experience more akin to the apartment world, with detached-home benefits.

Renting a detached home is attractive for many of the same reasons as renting an apartment: the portability/flexibility of a lease, no exterior maintenance, and no mortgage debt.  A single-family home offers more space and privacy, with a backyard, attached garage, and other features not available in multifamily housing.  I read where one developer of B2R communities automatically puts a dog door in every home.  Smart.

Multifamily is vertical, with neighbors above and below you, and it’s noisy.  With single-family homes, you have none of those acoustical issues.

There is a veritable ocean of capital now seeking B2R communities.  Consumer rental demand that is driving these institutions to want much greater levels of inventory of this product.  Institutional investors are learning that new B2R communities are a very safe product.

“I’ve got clients, multiple, well over a couple billion dollars worth of capital looking to place in this space,” said a new Phoenix-based commercial brokerage firm focused on single family rental and build-to-rent investment portfolios.   They are looking to acquire 5-6,000 homes in the next two years.”

Toll Brothers, a luxury homebuilder, recently announced its commitment to invest $60 million in a $400 million venture that will build homes specifically for rent in seven major U.S. cities.

Lennar, the nation’s largest homebuilder by revenue, experimented with a build-to-rent community in Sparks, Nevada, and announced in July its plans to move further into the space.

Clayton Homes, the 15th largest site-builder and home manufacturer, also recently revealed its build-for-rent home communities, to be built within its market.

By George Blackburne

No matter your situation, we have the perfect loan to meet your needs. Complete our online application to see how much you qualify for and your local loan consultant will reach out to you to discuss your options.

This may be the most instructive training article that I have written in several years, so I strongly encourage you to study it.  (Note: This is NOT the subject vet clinic.)

Sometimes in the commercial loan business, you have to value a property based strictly on a capitalization rate (“cap rate”).

Several years ago, I took on a commercial loan on an owner-occupied veterinary clinic.  The vet had gone through a divorce, and he had been forced to file for bankruptcy three years earlier.  He could therefore not qualify for a SBA loan.

The property was located in a town of over 75,000 people, so he could not qualify for a USDA business and industry loan either.  USDA B&I loans are very similar to SBA loans; but they are designed for rural areas.  Any town with a population of 50,000+ people is not considered sufficiently rural.

The loan had to go to a bank or credit union, so I was forced, absent an appraisal (always let the bank order the appraisal), to somehow create a pro forma operating statement on an owner-occupied veterinary clinic.  Hmmm.  How could I do that without having any idea of the market rent of a vet clinic?  Here is what I came up with, and I must say, it was brilliant.

I knew that the vet had bought the facility for $500,000 two years earlier.  To add in some property appreciation over the past two years, I multiplied $500,000 by 103%, which assumed a 3% annual appreciation rate.  To get the second year’s value, after more appreciation, I multiplied the result by 103% again, producing a value after two years of $530,450.

Then I pulled a cap rate of 8.5% out of thin air.  Poof.  Remember, I am trying to get my client a commercial loan here, and any commercial broker (a commercial real estate salesman who specializes in selling commercial-investment real estate) will tell you that my cap rate assumption was probably about right.  I might have used 5.5% for a nice apartment building and 6.5% to 7.5% for a retail or industrial property.

You are reminded that a cap rate is just the return on his money that an investor would earn if he paid all cash for the property, assuming you built in a replacement reserve of around 3% of the Effective Gross Income.  The Effective Gross Income is the number you get after taking off 5% for vacancy and collection loss.

Now please remember where we are going.  We are trying a create a believable pro forma operating statement on an owner-occupied vet clinic, when rental comp’s cannot be found.  You could look for a week and not find another vet clinic within 50 miles that was simply rented from some passive investor.

You will recall that a pro forma operating statement is just an operating budget for the upcoming year, assuming you built in a replacement reserve to eventually replace the roof and the HVAC unit.

Quick Joke:

My wife and I had just finished a meal at one of our local restaurants when I realized I’d left my wallet at home. As the wife headed to the door to retrieve her purse from the car, she told the waitress what had happened, adding, “But don’t worry, I’m leaving my husband for collateral.” The waitress took one look at me and asked her, “What else you got?”

If you are not working towards building your own loan servicing portfolio, get out of the business. The money is in servicing.

Back to the Lesson:

Even though we have absolutely no rental rate comparable’s, we can now compute the net operating income (“NOI”) on the vet clinic.  We simply multiply the value of the building ($530,450) times the cap rate (8.5%) to arrive at the NOI ($45,088).

Confused?

 To value any commercial-investment
property using the income approach, we
simply divide the NOI by the cap rate.

For example, if an apartment building had a net operating income of $300,000; and we knew that apartment buildings in the area were selling at 5.5% cap rates, we would simply divide $300,000 by 5.5% to arrive at a value of the apartment building of $5.45 million.

To value a commercial property –

Value = Net Operating Income / Cap Rate

Now let’s get back to our veterinary clinic.  We are trying to build a pro forma operating statement, while hampered by the fact that we have no rental comp’s.

To get a net operating income, we simply move the formula around –

NOI = Value of the Property x Cap Rate

NOI = $530,450 x 8.5%

NOI = $45,088

We’re getting there!  But your commercial lender will want to see a Gross Income, a 5% Reserve for Vacancy and Collection Loss, some expenses, including a management fee, and a 3% Reserve for Replacement.

The expenses are easy.  We just assume that the property is leased on a triple net basis (“NNN”)!  The tenant (our vet) pays the taxes, the insurance, the repairs, the utilities, etc.   Poof.  Suddenly we have no expenses to worry about.  Am I good or what?  Haha!

But your commercial lender will still want to see you taking off 5% for Vacancy & Collection Loss.  He will want to see you taking off 3% for Management and another 3% for Reserves for Replacement.

We know that the NOI is just 94% of the Effective Gross Income, after taking off 3% for Management and 3% for Reserves.  Therefore to get the Effective Gross Income, we simply divide the NOI by 94%.

To get the Gross Income, we start by knowing that the Effective Gross Income is 95% of the Gross Income, because we have to take off 5% for Vacancy and Collection Loss.  Therefore we simply divide the Effective Gross Income by 95%.  Voila!  We’ve done it.

PRO FORMA OPERATING STATEMENT

Gross Income:                                         $50,364
Less 5% Reserve for Vacancy:                $ 2,398
Effective Gross Income:                          $47,966

Less 3% For Management:                     $ 1,439
Less 3% Replacement Reserves:           $ 1,439

Net Operating Income:                            $45,088

Take pride in your understanding of today’s lesson.

Did I lose you?  Remember, I had to create a pro forma operating statement, so the lender could compute the debt service coverage ratio on your commercial loan request.

The problem was that there were only about twenty veterinary clinics within 50 miles of the subject property, and all of them were owner-occupied.  There were no rental comparable’s, so I couldn’t just say, “Steve’s Vet Clinic is leased for $3.00 sf, so the market rent of the the subject property must be $3.00 sf as well.”

By assuming a reasonable and believable cap rate, we were able to work backwards to create a reasonable pro forma operating statement.

By the way, this commercial loan successfully (and easily) closed with a credit union, despite the recent bankruptcy.  Hoorah!

By George Blackburne

This is the perfect time to talk about the “quality” of income. Real estate crashes seem to strike about every ten to fourteen years, and it has been thirteen years since the Great Recession. If we were to have another commercial real estate crash, would you rather own a building leased to Betty’s Gift Shop or one leased to Amazon.com?

The quality of income refers to the likelihood that you are going to receive it.  All money is green, whether it comes from the headquarters of the Catholic Church in America or from Boom-Boom’s Place, LLC, a chain of gentlemen’s clubs in southern Louisiana.

But is it likely that Boom-Boom’s Place may have a little trouble making its rent payments or its mortgage loan payments if the economy completely tanks?  Guys are less likely to be drinking five beers a night and spending $30 on tips to the dancers if they are out of work.

Okay, obviously, we would rather be on the receiving end of $7,000 per month from Amazon.com than from Betty’s Gift Shop; but in order to win that deal, we have to make some sacrifices.

Amazon.com, Inc. signs a lease for a small industrial building, perhaps used to repair its delivery trucks.  Upon the execution (signing) of the lease, the owners of the little industrial building offers the property for sale.

Now normal industrial buildings in Portland are selling at, say, 6.5% cap rates.  In other words, if an investor paid all cash for a garden-vareity industrial building in Portland, he could expect to earn, after paying all expenses and setting aside a little money every year to eventually replace the roof and the HVAC system in 12 years, a return on his money of around 6.5%.

A cap rate is just the return on your money if you paid all cash for a commercial building.

Wake up, folks! The money in this industry is in loan servicing fees!

Before computing that return on your money, always remember that you need to set aside a little money every year to replace the roof and the HVAC system.  This is called the replacement reserve.

Okay, so the seller has a building leased to Amazon.com for $7,000 per month.  Your accountant tells you that you need to set aside $850 per month to eventually replace the roof, repave the parking lot, and replace the HVAC system.  So the investment is scheduled to yield $6,150 per month.

Since industrial buildings in Portland typically sell at a 6.5% cap rate, you compute the value as follows:  Six-thousand-one-hundred-fifty dollars per month times twelve months suggests an annual net operating income (“NOI”) of $73,800.

If you divide the annual net operating income (NOI) by the proper cap rate (expressed as a decimal), you get its value.

Okay, so $73,800 divided by .065 (6.5% expressed as decimal) equals a value $1.14 million.  Therefore you submit your offer of $1.14 million.  The selling broker falls out of his chair laughing.  What the heck?

“George,” he says, “Betty’s Gift Shop might sell for $1.14 million (a 6.5% cap rate), but this is Amazon.com!  The world could be in complete chaos, yet a buyer could absolutely depend on Amazon making its rent payments.  There are investors out there who need the security of predictable payments, and they will pay far extra to buy that stream of predictable payments.”

“George, I have offers on this building of $1.5 million, $1.72 million, and finally $1.85 million.  That works out to a 4% cap rate.”

When a real estate and stock market crash is coming, it’s all about the quality of the income.

By George Blackburne

Wow.  If you walked into the executive offices of some savings and loan associations in the early 1980’s, the wealth and opulence would have amazed you – walls paneled with expensive oak, glistening marble floors imported from Italy, and genuine crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling.  On the walls you would often find wildly-expensive oil paintings created by the great masters.

If invited, you might dine in the executive dining room, where highly-paid chefs would treat you to a masterpiece of culinary delight.  The President of the S&L might even fly in on the corporate jet to meet you.  And hence came the famous expression…

In other words, if the president of a publicly-traded S&L started spending money like a drunken sailor, dump your stock.  The orgy of excess spending all came crashing down just a few years later, when this lavish spending and some reckless underwriting caught up to the S&L’s.  But how did we get here?

From the year 1933, which represented the bottom of the Great Depression, until the year 1986, Federal Reserve Regulation Q limited the interest rate that banks and S&L’s could pay on time deposits (CD’s).

In other words, suppose you owned a bank, and your bank desperately needed more deposits.  The other banks in town were paying just 2.0% on C.D.’s, but you were willing to pay 2.5% interest to your depositors.

Guess what?  You couldn’t do it.  Regulation Q limited you to just 2.0%.  Your bank was not legally allowed to offer 2.5%.  In order to compete, banks offered free toasters or free transistor radios in order to attract depositors.

Then in 1986, Federal regulators relaxed Regulation Q.  As long as your bank was healthy, you could offer whatever interest rate you wanted in order to attract new deposits.

Suddenly, wealthy real estate developers were opening their own banks and S&L’s.  Hot money was quickly being moved from bank to bank, as certificates of deposit matured.  Whichever bank or S&L in the entire country was offering the highest interest rate would get these fast-moving deposits.  After all, the deposits were insured by the Federal government.  It didn’t matter which bank a depositor chose.

But as interest rates on bank certificates of deposit increased, it became increasingly difficult for a bank or an S&L to make a profit.  There was a practical limit as to how high of an interest rate an S&L could charge for a mortgage loan.

To make matters worse, the bleeding heart California Supreme Court, in an infamous decision known as Wallenkamp v. Bank of America, had ruled in 1980 that a due-on-sale clause in a mortgage was unenforceable.  Other states soon followed suit.

Prior to this boneheaded decision, a bank could make a 30-year home mortgage at a fixed rate of, say, 3.5%, knowing that the vast majority of homeowners would move and sell their house every seven years.  When they sold their homes, the mortgage would have to be paid off.  If interest rates crept up to 4.25%, it was not the end of the world for the bank because the loan would almost certainly be paid off in just a few years.

As interest rates on both C.D.’s and mortgages marched upwards due to raging inflation, banks and S&L’s soon found themselves actually losing money on the older fixed-rate mortgages in their portfolio.  They might be forced by inflation and competition to pay 6% on deposits, while earning just 3.5% on a mortgage loan that potentially could stay on the books for the next 30 more years!

Banks did not suffer as badly as savings and loan associations.  Banks always wrote fewer mortgage loans than S&L’s.  Banks, in those days, also priced many of their business loans at 2% over prime.  As the prime rate marched ever upwards, so did the interest rate charged to their borrowers.

But S&L were only allowed by charter at the time to make mortgage loans, not business loans.  These mortgage loans were almost universally fixed rate loans.  The fixed rate on the mortgages in the portfolio of an S&L soon became too low for most S&L’s to make a profit.  Remember, the prime rate reached 21.5% in 1981, as inflation approached 16% annually.

The Explosion of Construction Lending:

Savings and loan associations therefore became desperate to earn more income.  They found this additional income in the form of construction loans.

Construction loans, assuming the project goes well, are very profitable for a bank or an S&L.  The bank gets to earn its two-point loan origination fee (competition has since forced this typical loan origination fee down to just one modernly) on the entire loan amount, but in the early months, the bank has only a tiny fraction of the loan outstanding.   Cha-ching.  This works out to a huge yield for the bank.

In addition, construction loans are short term.  Banks greatly prefer short term loans because they can get their money back and then go into turtle mode if they see a recession coming.

Therefore, in the early 1980’s, commercial construction lending went wild.  The skylines of every football team city in the country were lined with huge construction cranes, as huge office towers and hotel towers climbed towards the heavens.

The Savings and Loan Crisis:

Then the government changed the tax law.  No longer could depreciation losses be used to shelter the incomes of the rich and of high-income earners, like physicians.  They began to dump, and even walk away from, their commercial real estate holdings.  Prices plummeted by 45%.

At the same time, the price of oil also plummeted.  Oil-producing regions like Texas and Colorado saw their incomes shrivel and their office buildings soon emptied.  The era of see-through buildings had arrived.

A see-through building was typically an office tower with no tenants and no tenant improvements.  Because the building was just an empty shell, you could literally look in one window and see the seagulls flying outside of the far windows.

The S&L’s Crisis rolled across the country, starting in the East first, reaching Texas 18- months later, and finally reaching California 18-months after that.  The crisis came to a head and resulted in the failure of 1,043 out of 3,234 savings and loan associations in the United States between 1986 and 1995.

The rest is history.

By George Blackburne

For Your Real Estate Investment Needs: A Soft Money Loan is the perfect solution for long term real estate investor, first time investors to seasoned real estate entrepreneurs.

Long-Term Financing : This type of loan has long-term financing (5/1 ARM, 7/1 ARM – 30 Year Fixed) for real estate investors, who prefer to finance the purchase and/or rehab of their investment property.

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