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Educating Real Estate Investors — Third Episode in My New Podcast Series

Welcome back to my new podcast series. In my first interview I answered some questions about how I got started as an investor, and I hope my experience provided some ideas for you if you’re just looking to get started yourself. 

And in the second, I talked about my first commercial investment, which is where I really found my way in leveraging technology, and which led to the birth of RealData software.

In this third interview I discuss how my experiences with the software company evolved into a passion for investor education.

Below is a snippet of the video version of this podcast. You can watch the entire video on youtube, or visit our complete youtube video library (lots of good stuff there for investors). You can also listen to the audio version of my podcasts on Spotify, Apple, or on most anyplace you usually get your podcasts.

 

 
Copyright 2023,  Frank Gallinelli and RealData® Inc. All Rights Reserved

The information presented in this article represents the opinions of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of RealData® Inc. The material contained in articles that appear on realdata.com is not intended to provide legal, tax or other professional advice or to substitute for proper professional advice and/or due diligence. We urge you to consult an attorney, CPA or other appropriate professional before taking any action in regard to matters discussed in any article or posting. The posting of any article and of any link back to the author and/or the author’s company does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation of the author’s products or services.


Evaluating an Income Property and the Birth of RealData — Second Episode in My New Podcast Series

Welcome back to my new podcast series. In my first interview I answered some questions about how I got started as an investor, and I hope my experience provided some ideas for you if you’re just looking to get started yourself. 

Now I want to take you on the next few steps in my journey and talk about how I came to learn about analyzing income-property investments.

In this interview I tell you about my first commercial investment, which is where I really found my way in leveraging technology, and which led to the birth of RealData software.

Below is a snippet of the video version of this podcast. You can watch the entire video on youtube, or visit our complete youtube video library (lots of good stuff there for investors). You can also listen to the audio version of my podcasts on Spotify, Apple, or on most anyplace you usually get your podcasts.

 

UPDATE: Episode 3 is available now!

 

Copyright 2023,  Frank Gallinelli and RealData® Inc. All Rights Reserved

The information presented in this article represents the opinions of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of RealData® Inc. The material contained in articles that appear on realdata.com is not intended to provide legal, tax or other professional advice or to substitute for proper professional advice and/or due diligence. We urge you to consult an attorney, CPA or other appropriate professional before taking any action in regard to matters discussed in any article or posting. The posting of any article and of any link back to the author and/or the author’s company does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation of the author’s products or services.


Getting Started in Real Estate Investing — First Episode in My New Podcast Series

You probably all know me as a “numbers guy” who focuses on metrics and analysis of potential real estate investments.

But I hear lot of people who sound frustrated or discouraged by a very basic question: Just how do I get started?

So I’m going to step back from my spreadsheets for a bit and try to address that question — and I’ll do it in this first of a series of podcasts where I’ll talk about the not-so-exotic way I began. Spoiler alert: I’ll discuss something I did back then that I didn’t know had a name, something called BRRRR.

The video below is a snippet from the first podcast. You can listen to the whole thing on Spotify, Apple, or on most anyplace you usually get your podcasts.

 

UPDATE: Episode 2 is available now!

 
Copyright 2023,  Frank Gallinelli and RealData® Inc. All Rights Reserved

The information presented in this article represents the opinions of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of RealData® Inc. The material contained in articles that appear on realdata.com is not intended to provide legal, tax or other professional advice or to substitute for proper professional advice and/or due diligence. We urge you to consult an attorney, CPA or other appropriate professional before taking any action in regard to matters discussed in any article or posting. The posting of any article and of any link back to the author and/or the author’s company does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation of the author’s products or services.


Now earn a digital certificate with my video course, “Introduction to Real Estate Investment Analysis”

Professional education is a great thing. And being able to broadcast news of your success makes it even more valuable.

That’s why I’m announcing a new benefit to students who enroll in my course, Introduction to Real Estate Investment Analysis. I’m now awarding a digital Certificate of Achievement and badge to students who successfully complete the course.

Here are some questions you probably want to ask:

What does it cost? For my students: nothing. RealData is picking up the cost of issuing and hosting the certificate.

What do you mean by “digital certificate?” Your certificate will be hosted by Accredible.com, an industry-leading credentialing platform. As you’ll see below, it’s designed so you can share it easily.

Does that mean I don’t get a physical certificate to hang on my office wall? No, you also get a pdf version you can print.

What’s so special about this digitally hosted certificate?  So glad you asked. Here are a few things you couldn’t do with a traditional certificate:

  • You receive a unique url for your Certificate, so you can share it with employers, clients, industry groups, just about anyone.
  • You can share it on any of your social media networks with just a click on a toolbar.

 Your personal certificate page includes a dashboard, as shown at the left. From there you can…

  • Add it to your LinkedIn profile
  • Add it to your email signature
  • Get the code to embed it in your website
  • Email it to anyone
  • Download it as a PDF
  • Download a badge image, which you can attach to your email signature, put on business cards, etc.
  • Add “evidence” to your certificate to increase your credibility — examples of your work, videos about yourself, links to projects you’ve been involved with – and even more

How do I obtain my certificate?Within a few days after you complete the work to earn your certificate, we’ll send you an email with instructions to access it. If you believe you’ve completed the requirements but haven’t heard from us, please contact us at mailto:education@realdata.com

Terms of Use: Please review our common-sense Terms of Use

I believe our online video course provides a solid educational opportunity for those who want to learn about real estate investment and development. I hope this digital certificate will recognize your efforts and will benefit you for devoting the time and effort to pursue that education. I look forward to contacting you when you complete your coursework!

Frank Gallinelli


New Version of our Income-Property Video Tutorial

Screenshot 2016-06-30 09.36.08We’ve just released an updated version of our video tutorial, How to Evaluate an Income Property Investment with REIA Pro. We’ve given the video a serious makeover — additional content, better audio and graphics, greater emphasis on how to use RealData’s REIA software to perform an analysis — and have added a seventh video that provides an overview of some of the software’s more advanced features.

•    You get access to the web-based video series on our new e-learning platform. Watch it online at your convenience — on your desktop or mobile device.
•    The property analysis is based on a sample case study of a mixed-use property.
•    The series uses our REIA Pro product to analyze the investment, but many of of the features portrayed in the videos are found in the REIA Express edition.
•    The series is presented by Frank Gallinelli, founder of RealData, Inc.
•    Includes seven videos with over 2 hours of instruction

If you’ve already purchased the original release of this series, you’ll receive an email with instructions on how to get the new version at no charge. If you haven’t purchased it before, we invite you to download the case study and view a lesson-by-lesson synopsis.


Real Estate Expense Recoveries—What are they, how do they work? (part 2)

Expense recoveries (aka reimbursements or pass-throughs) serve as a customary ingredient in leases for non-residential property. In part 1 of this article, I discussed some of the typical ways such an arrangement might play out.


The Simple Pass-Through

Fotolia_84790892_XS_split_costsIn a single-tenant property the tenant may be expected to pay all or a portion of certain operating expenses, such as property taxes and insurance, in addition to its base rent. If the tenant is obliged to pay just a portion of the expense, that amount is the excess over what is called an “expense stop.” Let’s say the property taxes are $12,000 and the lease requires the tenant to pay the excess over an expense stop of $4,000. The tenant would have to pay $8,000.

property tax expense — expense stop = expense reimbursement

$12,000 — $4,000 = $8,000 expense reimbursement

If this were a multi-tenant property, the recoverable amount would typically be pro-rated among the tenants—that is, it would be divided up according to the square footage of each tenant’s space in relation to the whole.


Base-Year Expense Stop

A variation on the expense-stop theme is the “base year expense stop.” In this scenario, the parties agree that the landlord will pay the full amount of the recoverable expenses for the first year, and in future years the tenant will pay any increase over that base.

An arrangement like this certainly seems straightforward enough, but prospective tenants sometimes view it with a jaundiced eye. What if the landlord tries to maneuver the timing of base year expenses in order to minimize them? Then the excess in subsequent years would be artificially inflated. If that’s a concern, then perhaps the tenant would prefer a pre-defined expense stop, as in the earlier example.

Keep in mind that the tenant does not pay these expenses directly to the original source of the bill. The landlord pays the tab and passes the appropriate charge through to the tenant, hence the term “expense recovery” or “reimbursement.”


Common Area Maintenance

furniture in small spaceNot every property will fit into a nice, neat, divisible mold. Take, for example, an office building or a larger shopping center. Properties like these may include areas such as lobbies, hallways, elevators, escalators, rest rooms, and parking lots—areas provided for the benefit of all the tenants, as well as for the public served by those tenants (i.e., their customers or clients). In addition, there may be services that the landlord provides for everyone’s benefit, such as security, trash removal, and janitorial. How does the property owner pass these costs through to tenants?

One approach is to bundle up the cost of common services into an item called CAM— Common Area Maintenance charges— and to pass that charge through based on square footage, just as one might pass through a property’s tax expense. Let’s take a tenant who occupies 2,000 square feet out of a total of 10,000; and let’s also say that we have identified $1,000 in total CAM charges for a given time period.

pro rata share of space x CAM charge
= expense reimbursement

20% x $1,000 = expense reimbursement

= $200 expense reimbursement

This method may be fine in situations where the CAM charges are based mainly on services, but the property owner might be less than satisfied with this approach if the property has a significant amount of physical area devoted to common use. Why?


Usable vs. Rentable

Perhaps the answer lies in that we mean by “space.” Let’s pause for two definitions:

usable square feet (usf): The amount of space physically occupied by a tenant.

rentable square feet (rsf): The amount of space on which the tenant pays rent.

The common area represents space from which the tenants benefit, but that space is not part of their private, usable square footage. The common space is being used for lobbies and hallways and rest rooms, so it’s not available to lease out and earn rental income. This would not appear to be an ideal business plan for the landlord. Should the landlord absorb the loss? Is there an alternative?

The answer, and more, in our final installment about expense reimbursements.

—-Frank Gallinelli

Want to learn more? Visit learn.realdata.com

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Your time and your investment capital are too valuable to risk on a do-it-yourself investment spreadsheet. For more than 30 years, RealData has provided the best and most reliable real estate investment software to help you make intelligent investment decisions and to create presentations you can confidently show to lenders, clients, and equity partners. Find out more at www.realdata.com.

Copyright 2016,  Frank Gallinelli and RealData® Inc. All Rights Reserved

The information presented in this article represents the opinions of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of RealData® Inc. The material contained in articles that appear on realdata.com is not intended to provide legal, tax or other professional advice or to substitute for proper professional advice and/or due diligence. We urge you to consult an attorney, CPA or other appropriate professional before taking any action in regard to matters discussed in any article or posting. The posting of any article and of any link back to the author and/or the author’s company does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation of the author’s products or services.

New Edition of Frank Gallinelli’s “What Every Real Estate Investor Needs to Know..”

book1 ed3Frank Gallinelli’s popular book, “What Every Real Estate Investor Needs to Know about Cash Flow…” is now available in a new third edition. Frank has added detailed case studies while maintaining the essentials that have made his book a staple among investors. The new cases show how to evaluate an apartment building, a mixed-use, and a triple-net leased property — not just running the numbers, but also looking beyond the surface data to see how you might discern what’s really going on with a potential investment.

See the new edition at Amazon here.

McGraw-Hill first published Frank’s book in 2003 and has since sold over 100,000 copies. For more than a decade it has been a top title in the real estate section at Amazon.

For those seeking reviews from readers, look to the 100+ reviews, which collectively rate the book at 4.7 out of 5 stars.

And finally, a visual clue: Second edition has a blue cover, new third edition has a green cover.

 

 


New Online Course—Introduction to Real Estate Investment Analysis

REIA Course Logo croppedReaders of my books—especially What Every Real Estate Real Estate Investor Needs to Know About Cash Flow…—have been asking if I would ever be teaching a course. The answer, finally, is “yes.” I’ve just released a comprehensive online course with more than 40 video lessons (including case studies) plus quizzes, practice problems, and other resources.

Real estate investing is all about the numbers, and in this course I teach you about the metrics, concepts and techniques used by successful investors—how to make smart and profitable investment decisions, and how to be alert to dicey deals. In my case studies, I show you not only how to run the numbers, but also how to look beyond the raw data for clues about potential opportunities and pitfalls.

You can scope out the course and the complete syllabus at learn.realdata.com

Wishing you successful investing,

Frank Gallinelli


Investing in Real Estate: How Much Analysis Do You Really Need?

More than once – in my writing, my teaching, talking in my sleep – I have been known to say that real estate investing is all about the numbers. There is, of course, great truth in that pithy statement, or so I believe; but there is perhaps more to the story that you should be careful not to overlook.

The data that you collect about an income-property – the current rental income and operating expenses, the financing options, and the resulting cash flows and potential resale– are all essential to making an informed analysis of a property’s value and its appeal as an investment. So too is an understanding of the key metrics. What are the expected Debt Coverage Ratio, Capitalization Rate and Internal Rate of Return, and what do they all mean?

A wise investor realizes that this information represents the foreground, but not the complete picture. There is a context, a background, in which these data reside, and you ignore it at your peril.

When I teach real estate investment analysis to my graduate students, I begin by telling them that they absolutely must learn how to run and interpret the numbers. But I also stress (sometimes to the point of becoming really annoying) that they have to look behind the numbers, to read the information about the property as if it were a story. The financial facts and figures about a property that you uncover today may be entirely accurate, but can you rely on them them to persist? What are the long-term risks and opportunities, the indirect factors, and how do they inform the numbers that you will plug into your projections?

For example, if you have commercial tenants, how strong are their businesses? One of the case studies I give my students is a mixed-use property with retail tenants whose business models are on the decline. Those tenants have leases with options to renew, but if their customer bases are shrinking, isn’t it more prudent to suspect that they may not choose to renew? Shouldn’t you also consider what could happen to your cash flow in a worst-case scenario, where they go bankrupt before their current leases are up?

Rather than simply assuming an ongoing revenue stream from the current leases, perhaps, as I tell my students, you need to look beyond the current numbers. If you see some significant risk going forward, maybe you should build rollover vacancy, leasing commissions and tenant improvements into your projections of future performance. You’re still going to run the numbers, and they still matter; but now, taking a broader view may alter your perspective on possible future cash flows.

One way to widen your field of vision is to go beyond the specific property and take into account some intangibles, both local and global. Real estate, like politics, is very much a local game. How strong is the local economy? Is unemployment a problem? What is the trend in the absorption of space – are vacancies growing or declining? Where is your city or town’s budget heading? Are there bond issues on the horizon that could materially affect your property taxes? The answers to questions like these will connect directly to the kinds of assumptions you make concerning the risk of future vacancy loss, and the rate of growth, if any, in your rents.

Then there’s the global view. You want to look at how the overall economy might affect your property. For example, it is typically the case that in times of tight credit, or in a miserable economy such as we’ve seen for the past several years, demand for apartments tends to increase. There is nothing surprising in this. Folks can’t get mortgages because their incomes have dropped and perhaps because banks aren’t lending freely. People who would otherwise be prospective homebuyers or who would be able to stay in their current homes are now renting apartments, thus reducing vacancy and often pushing rents upward.

The same causes – a wounded economy and lack of credit – might lead to an opposite effect on office and retail space, where businesses have to downsize because their customers have less money to spend.

So, if you find yourself rolling into a particular economic cycle, then you will want to adjust your projections for the future accordingly. In the example above, you would begin with whatever revenue stream you find in place; then, in the case of apartments, you would probably project declining vacancy loss and increasing rental rates for a few years, but you would probably do the opposite for retail and office. Same starting point, but different paths into the future.

What is our takeaway here? First, that real estate investing really is about the numbers. You’re going to scrutinize every lease, every operating expense, every financing option to understand how you believe the property will function on the day you acquire it. There is no substitute for crunching these numbers, and no reason to dismiss what they tell you.

But then you’ll pause to recognize that you’re probably going to own the property well beyond that first day. That’s when you need to look up from your spreadsheet. You need to look both at and beyond the current data and metrics, to visualize the property and your expectations for it in the context of its larger environment. The numbers truly matter, but so does the sometimes dicey, not-so-tidy real world in which they dwell.

–Frank Gallinelli

Copyright 2012, RealData® Inc. All Rights Reserved

The information presented in this article represents the opinions of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of RealData® Inc. The material contained in blog posts and articles that appear on realdata.com is not intended to provide legal, tax or other professional advice or to substitute for proper professional advice and/or due diligence. We urge you to consult an attorney, CPA or other appropriate professional before taking any action in regard to matters discussed in any article or posting. The posting of any article and of any link back to the author and/or the author’s company does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation of the author’s products or services.

You may not reproduce, distribute, or transmit any of the materials at this site without the express written permission of RealData® Inc. or other copyright holders. The content of web sites displayed or linked from the realdata.com is the copyrighted material of those respective sites.


Frank Gallinelli to Speak at BiggerPockets Real Estate Investing Summit and Expo, March 23-24, 2012

BiggerPockets — an 85,000-member community of real estate investors — is having its first Real Estate Investing Summit in Denver, March 2012, and has invited Frank Gallinelli as a featured speaker. Frank is the founder of RealData Software and the author of What Every Real Estate Investor Needs to Know About Cash Flow… and Mastering Real Estate Investment. He will speak on, “Real Estate Investment Analysis, Methods and Mindset — What to Know, What to Do.”

According to BP founder Josh Dorkin, “BiggerPockets is planning on having dozens of expert investors, commentators and educators speak to an audience that is expected to include hundreds of attendees from around the country. Through lectures, roundtables, and other session formats, the event will cover topics including rehabbing, landlording, investing in notes & mortgages, real estate financing & capital raising, commercial investing, and much more.”

You can sign up to attend by following this link. Hope to see you there.

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