Background: Our advisor was granted a portfolio assignment that consisted of roughly 60 million in small balance apartments primarily located in the South Bay area of California. What was discovered soon in the initial consultation was that the borrower had some major hurdles for us to get around. The problems primarily were a result of the decrease in property values a sign of the current CRE markets which made the required Loan to Value an issue.
To begin with our Advisor had to identify all of the lenders that would underwrite to the highest LTV and at the most aggressive rates. Of the few Lenders that made the first cut we acknowledged that we were going to have to spread these properties out to different lenders based on the characteristics to the property type, location, loan balance, and estimated value. After conferring with the chosen lenders we came up with a strategy that best met the client’s goals.
There are two ways of approaching the topic of return on equity (ROE) as it applies to real estate investments. In each of them, “return” has the same meaning: cash flow after taxes (CFAT). What differs is the meaning of “equity”. In the traditional method, the equity is your initial cash investment. For this assignment we had to use the alternative technique, of taking the initial cash plus the additional equity that has built up due to amortization of the mortgage and to the increase or in this case decrease in the value of the properties.
Our Advisor met with the client and presented to them the findings. The client was able to see instances when the ROE was declining, and was confronted with the question: Is it the best use of my money to have it tied up as equity in this property? It is not a rhetorical question-maybe it is the best use in some cases- but in those scenarios where it didn’t make sense the client was advised to consider refinancing to take cash out and reinvest or to sell outright and reinvest into a different, perhaps larger property.
As a result of our ability to underwrite and analyze these type of properties we were able to guide this client on all of his properties in this small 60 million dollar portfolio. Results were, lower rates, refinanced in some cases 80% LTV, maximized cash out in others, and from there our Advisor continued to worked with the client on additional properties that were purchased as a result of the freed equity.