Real Estate Economics and Finance

I noticed that a few people were landing on this website based on some variation of the following search: “What questions should I ask when investing in a real estate project?”

Here is the brief answer: It depends on what you mean by project, but this generally implies that there is a start and an end date which are known (or projected… pun intended) in advance. Such short term projects usually involve development of some sort, but the detail of the questions you would ask is significantly different than investing in an asset for the long term. A real estate development project carries significantly more risk than a purchase and hold strategy, so you should also expect a higher return in exchange for the additional possibility of loss incurred.

1. Most importantly; the people (management) involved. What have your past experiences been with them? What type of experience do they have with similar projects? What experience is their team missing and how do they plan to compensate for this lack?
2. What is the investment strategy? One would imagine that the solicitor was attempting to exploit some competitive advantage which they possess. Are there economic circumstances or scenarios which success is dependent upon?
3. More specifically, what is the time frame and what are the investment terms? Hopefully they will have prepared a prospectus; otherwise, I would tread VERY lightly. You will want to see their financial projections, a sensitivity analysis and any key assumptions they’ve made.
4. The last thing I would suggest, is that you speak to everyone you trust and ask for their opinion. Don’t accept what they say at face value, dig deeper until you truly understand why they feel the way they do. Not all opinions were created equally.

There’s much more detail one could go into, but now you know where to start, and knowing is half the battle. Go Joe!

This is the calm before the storm of the next housing crash. As the pendulum continues its down swing, expect more fallout across a broader number of housing markets. For the enterprising investor, the upcoming “double dip” presents an unprecedented opportunity to profit.

Zero Hedge presents the case for a second leg to the housing crisis and a lack of government regulation has provided yet another chance for investors to reap tremendous profits. Remember credit default swaps?

The banks will get hit again, but they’re not dummies. They’ve been building up capital reserves by dramatically reducing lending to small businesses and individuals. As they are preparing for another big hit to their balance sheets, only the supremely credit worthy stand a chance to get approved. The second housing crisis will force many banks to take another big hit against their balance sheets as the value of their mortgage holdings takes another big hit, and they are preparing for this eventuality. You’ll also notice that the spreads on CDS are much tighter than before the downturn; however, there is still room to profit here.

The growing deficit will undoubtedly lift the housing kimono once more before a true recovery can begin. The storm clouds are slowly gathering, so don’t delay. Act now and lock in your profits for episode two of real estate crash!

If you’re not yet convinced, compare the current trajectory of the housing bounce to recent downturns in this Case/Schiller Housing Index chart from an article on alternatives to the huge bank bailout:

For further discussion on this topic, see:

• Home Prices Advance Again In November, But Slowing Sales Suggest Price Weaknesses Ahead (Highly recommended if you like charts and need some good counter points or support [Table 4] to my argument… it’s a much more balanced view, but hey, what do you expect from credit rating agency?)
• http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1103750

Here’s one chart from the S&P release that’s a related and updated version of the one above:

The IBM office park built in Westchester, NY during the 1980s is nearly empty. The team members from one particular IBM work group have never even met before… at least in person. Online, they meet everyday.

This isn’t some idealistic vision of a future work place, it’s modern day reality at one of America’s largest corporations. In the PBS Frontline documentary, Digital Nation, Francoise LeGoues, the VP of Innovation at IBM, estimates the savings from holding online meetings amounted to $1mm last year. The online world, Second Life, serves as a virtual office space for various working groups at IBM where they hold daily “sit downs”, gather to discuss strategy and map out the team’s mission ahead.

Are “Big Office” Companies Inefficient?

Technological advance continues to accelerate at break-neck pace while innovation constantly iterates old technologies, re-purposing them for greater efficiency. We all like real estate for different reasons, but the single constant benefit has always been real estate’s inelastic supply. While it’s (mostly) true that they aren’t making any more, it looks like they might start using less of it. This could have significant implications for commercial real estate owners if tenant’s employees start working from home. Clearly, some industries and types of commercial real estate are not as threatened by this trend. Don’t expect your dentist to be remotely cleaning your teeth any time soon and don’t expect Jeff Bezos to keep all that inventory in his backyard (although he probably could) rather than a warehouse. However, much of America’s service driven economy does not require a physical presence to complete their jobs.

Time Left on the Clock

There are certainly obstacles to keep this from becoming the norm, so for the moment, the clock is still ticking. A valid concern for businesses considering a shift to a virtual work place is, can you effectively manage employees from a distance? There are good arguments on both sides of this issue, but as work places become more decentralized, certain skills (self-discipline) will become more valuable. Should the trend continue to gain momentum, demand for office space will also inevitably shrink at a faster rate. We can also be sure that the pace of such changes will certainly not let up as companies continue to look for ways to cut costs amidst a recession and greater competition from overseas.

It would be interesting to hear about other companies implementing remote office policies; especially the kinds of results they are getting. These days, we’re all on call 24/7 anyway, so really, what’s the difference?

Share your thoughts/questions/predictions/criticisms in the comments below.

NB. If you’re interesting in finding out more, as you might expect, you can find tons of extra info on the Digital Nation section of the PBS.org website. You can also watch the entire documentary.

A bookie is an arbitrager. He has no skin in the game; rather, he uses odds (the parallel in finance would be interest rates) to earn money on each bet that is placed (each financial transaction). The odds are always variable unless you are willing to pay a fee to lock it up.

At yesterday’s financial committee hearings, Loyd Blankfein gave a general overview of his firm’s risk management management practices: to paraphrase, risk mitigation is achieved by finding a third party to take the other side of the transaction. Fees from brokering these investments are a significant source of revenue for most investment banks. The research divisions of these same investment banks will also put out opinions on the direction of the market for most of asset classes, fortunately for bank, 50% of their customers will make sound investment decisions.

The issue in late 2008, was that the third party (AIG) in many of these transactions took on way too much risk from numerous investment banks. They put everything on black, and they were wrong. The result was that AIG couldn’t make good on their debts and the government had to come to the rescue. The investment banks had significant exposure to AIG’s credit risk and this is where the domino’s would have begun to fall.

Imagine a bookie in a similar situation. He takes a bet on opposing outcomes from each of two parties; one wins big money and, all because of overextending himself, the loser can’t pay. What’s a bookie to do?

If the financial committee could see the banks in the same light as a bookie operation, it would clear up much of the confusion over how to handle any future regulations. It seems apparent that a transaction tax could be levied or that banks can be required to have more skin in the game.

This brings up accounting issues, but should banks be required to hold some portion of every transaction on their books? How much is enough? Is 8% of risk weighted assets enough? Is there a better way? Let me know in comments.

A worthy anecdote from the front lines of distressed real estate deal making by Joshua Kahr at Kahr Real Estate. He discusses the importance of relationships and deal structure in a successful transaction:

[...] if a deal could be structured in a way in which a bank could receive more today for a defaulted note or an asset than they would otherwise receive by the investor by bringing in bank as a partial owner in the purchasing entity, this might help to better align the goals of the investor and the bank. In addition, the lender will often finance the new vehicle as a way to boost the overall sales price and mitigate taking a loss today. This process can be beneficial to both parties, because it allows the investors to reduce the equity commitment while providing the bank with a higher price today on paper. In addition to providing some percentage of the equity, a deal could be structured in which the investor must achieve a targeted rate of return prior to a bank receiving any part of its equity back.

A happy and healthy new year to you!

Advice to President Obama:

.”..we’re going to unclog the arteries. My banking experts have analyzed each of your balance sheets. You will tell us if we’re right. Those of you who are insolvent, we will nationalize and shut down. We will auction off your viable assets and will hold the toxic ones in a government reconstruction fund and sell them later when the market rebounds. Those of you who are weak will be merged. And those of you who are strong will receive added capital for your balance sheets, after you write down all your remaining toxic waste. I am not going to continue rewarding the losers and dimwits amongst you with handouts.”, Thomas Friedman wrote on Sunday.

With another $350 billion to spend, Barack Obama has a critical decision to make. In this mess of an economy, who is the best allocator of capital (how can we get the most bang for our buck)? There are three broad options:

1. Individuals
2. Government
3. Businesses

As our economy matured over the past several decades, banks (businesses) have been the bearer of this responsibility, but with the failure of so many massive financial institutions, can business be trusted allocate capital efficiently?

Yes, with a caveat. While capitalism has proven government is too susceptible to partisan & special interests, many individuals and businesses have also proven to be too susceptible to human nature, primarily greed. There are however, those that have proven different.

As Friedman points out, we must reward the businesses who have proven responsible and effective, not the reckless institutions managed by the weak leaders that brought this upon us.

Public works projects are well intentioned and should certainly be pursued where appropriate; however, government has largely proven to be an inefficient allocator of capital. The single greatest tool the government has is the ability to incentivise behavior through fiscal policy rather than mandate it through regulation.

In this spirit, if we want America to thrive again, government should focus its efforts and resources on putting Americans back to work. The key to this strategy is to reduce labor costs for employers.

• Obama has it right with his tax credit for businesses hiring new employees, but this does not go far enough. There is a need for a number of other programs which have been tossed around by the new administration and some they haven’t thought of yet.
• The tax credit certainly lowers costs, but it is an upfront savings which effects will be limited by businesses already struggling to keep who they currently have on staff.
• Healthcare is another crippling cost that keeps employers payrolls smaller than they otherwise would be. This is why passing Obama’s healthcare plan will open up resources for hiring a more robust workforce.
• Offer employers further tax benefits for subsidizing the education of new employees and community college students who will commit to working for the company once they graduate. Not only will this be a boon to educational institutions, it will provide a clear path to employment for underprivileged youth.
• A modified section 8 program can close the gap left by a weakened economy, falling wages and a government which is quickly becoming over-stretched. The impact on struggling families and a faltering real estate market would work by encouraging those under threat of foreclosure to make sure they are working, even if their wages were less than desirable.

Much of our strength as a nation comes from the incentive system embedded in a capitalist economy. Rewards come to those who work harder and smarter than the competition; put in place the right incentives, put America to work and we’ll be on the road to recovery sooner rather than later.

Adapting the Section 8 housing subsidy model, government might just find a way out of the cascading housing crisis. At the root of the problems in our credit markets and financial institutions are falling home prices nationwide; a phenomenon never before seen in America.

A program which subsidizes rents of homes would do two important things helping to abate the current crisis: (1) guarantee investors a baseline rental income –effectively allowing investors to accurately value a property based on cashflows guaranteed by the government– and (2) help individuals in danger of foreclosure by providing them with a stable place to live.

A subsidy plan could also be used to incentivise investors and financially troubled home owners to take actions which might aid our troubled economy in other areas…and god knows we need the help.

UPDATE [12.15.08]
Robert Maniscalco, my real estate law professor, brought up an interesting point today in class. Years ago, income producing property was depreciated over a twenty year life, rather than the current 39
year schedule. What a great compliment this would be to an expansion of the Section 8 rental subsidy program above. It would effectively result in a doubling of the depreciation write off (increasing investment returns) and a decrease in basis (reducing the incentive to sell). Rather than throw money at insolvent lending institutions, ideas like this would do much more to help the housing market find a bottom and save the U.S. tax payers a few bucks.

If 40:1 leverage was responsible for much of the GDP growth over the last decade or so, what does this mean for us going forward?

Here are a couple of questions we should be asking to determine where we are and where we are going (it’s already clear how the housing crises started):

1. Which assets benefited most from this exorbitant leverage environment?
2. What is a “healthy” level of leverage for these assets?
3. Based on the above two answers, what is the legitimate price level for these assets?
4. Did any of the financial engineering of the past decade have a legitimate use in risk reduction, thereby increasing what historical levels of “healthy” leverage are?

To the extent we can answer these questions, one should be able to call a “real” bottom and determine what the true expected returns will be in the long run. I haven’t seen a fair analysis of this anywhere, but if you have, please point to it in the comments below.

Most investors are rational; like most politicians are honest. So, if you fancy yourself one of the rational crowd, shouldn’t you be raking in the returns right now.

Too Smart By Half

“The problem with being smart, is waiting for the rest of the world to catch up with you.” – Jeff Macke (Fast Money on CNBC)

Should we accept this statement as true, we can infer that, to successfully time an investment, we must ask ourselves, “What event(s) will affect market psychology or, in other words, what will cause the tipping point?”


We can also state that the general liquidity of the asset in question should affect our decision.

Repressing Market Sentiment

Our answer to this answer should inform our investment decisions and strategy relative to the event(s).

So, what indicators should we ‘rational’ investors monitor? We’ve all heard of the “Magazine Cover Effect” and the “CNBC Effect“, but what are some other events indicating market psychology has gone askew? Market technicians should have a ball with this question.