Commercial Real Estate Investing From A-Z How You Can Lose 50% of Your Property Value in One Downturn: The Quadruple Whammy
In today's episode I go over how you can potentially lose 50% of the value of your property in one economic downturn. You could potentially lose less, you could potentially lose more, the point of this episode is to share with you the key points that make property values go down in a downturn.
You can read this entire episode here: https://montecarlorei.com/how-you-can-lose-50-of-your-property-value-in-one-downturn-the-quadruple-whammy/
Let’s take an example of a commercial retail property that you purchased for 10 million dollars at a 5% cap rate. This means that that property is currently making $500,000 in NOI. Let’s say, for example, that this property has 25,000 square feet. You have now have a 10 million dollar property making $500,000 NOI.
1. In this great economy, the rents are higher. Let’s say you were getting $20 per square foot per year across the board on all of your 25,000 sf of property.
2. Your property is 100% leased.
3. The interest rates are low. When property prices are rising, that means that interest rates are decreasing and more people can buy more property. When interest rates are higher, you do not qualify for as big of a loan as when interest rates are low because you have a specific dollar amount to pay every month.
4. And that brings us full circle. When interest rates are low, you can buy more property. More people are buying properties and naturally cap rates compress, they get smaller and smaller. So that’s what brings us to the 5% cap rate that you bought this property for.
Quadruple Whammy Gone Wrong – Economic Downturn
Let’s say something pops in the economy. Here is what is going to happen to all these four bullet points that I just described.
1. Your rents are going to go down. Instead of leasing for $20 per square foot per year, let’s say that about 25% of the property is now renting at $16 per square foot per year because some leases are going to be long term. Therefore, 75% of your tenants are still going to be on the $20 per square foot per year lease. Now, we dropped to $16 per square foot per year just because people cannot afford the $20, and your neighbors are also charging $16/sf so you cannot charge more. The total net operating income on that property is now $475,000. Again, this is if you are 100% leased.
2. Vacancies are higher. You are going to get some vacancies in that property, and is going to take longer to get them filled. Let’s be conservative and have a 15% vacancy rate at that $475,000 that you are now making because you’re charging a little bit less rent. You’re now making $403,000 in NOI. Now that your property just lost almost $100,000 in that operating income, unfortunately everyone is selling, because nobody can afford their mortgage, because they bought at a super high price, and they don’t have enough rent income to pay for the mortgage.
3. Interest rates are up, and buyers can afford less “property”.
4. Cap rates are higher because it’s a buyer’s market. Let’s say that from a 5% cap rate, the market is now selling properties at an 8% cap rate. So that $403,000 net operating income divided by an 8% cap brings the value of your property to $5,037,500. You just lost five million dollars of property value. Let’s just let that sink in for a bit.
Another important side of this coin is the potential lost income of not making an investment. Let’s say that you found a great deal back in 2016 that was bringing you 20% cash on cash return. At a $1,000,000 cash investment, you’d have lost $600,000 so far in three years (we’re currently in 2019) if you had not made the investment at that time.
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