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Return on Equity — What a Non-Traditional Approach Can Reveal

We usually think of Return on Equity (ROE) as a straightforward investment measure. That’s understandable, because the traditional method of calculating ROE is pretty clear cut: Take your cash flow after taxes and divide it by your initial cash investment.

This in fact is just a hop-and-a-step away from another popular measure, Cash-on-Cash Return (aka Equity Dividend Rate). The only difference is that Cash-on-Cash uses the cash flow before taxes.

Whichever of the two appeals to you more – and we’ll stick with ROE for simplicity here – the measurement will give you a quick sense of how your cash flow measures up to its cost.

There is a non-traditional approach, however, that we use in our Real Estate Investment Analysis software – an approach that can tell you something quite different about your income-property investment. This not-so-standard method differs in its definition of “equity.” Instead of looking at the actual dollars invested, you look instead at potential equity at a particular point in time. That equity is not what you invested, but rather the difference between what you believe the property is worth at that time and what you still owe in mortgage financing. So, if you look at the equity after one year (or two or three), you’ll be taking into account the growth or decline in the property’s value as well as the amortization of your mortgage.

Our non-standard formula now looks like this:

This measurement becomes interesting if you apply it in a multi-year projection. Let’s assume that you make projections about a property’s performance over a number of years and that you include in those projections the potential resale value and mortgage balances for each year (as we do in our REIA software). Whether or not you actually sell the property in any particular year, you accept the idea that your equity at a given time is the difference between what your property is worth and what you owe on your mortgages. By this reasoning, your return on equity measures not how your cash flow performs in relation to how much you originally invested, but rather how it performs in relation to how much you currently have “tied up” in this property.

What difference does it make? Consider this situation; you project that your property’s cash flow and resale value will increase each year but when you calculate the ROE you find the following:

You observe that your ROE starts going down at some point even though the value of the property and the Cash Flow After Taxes continue to go up. Is this a mistake? No, it can occur if the equity grows at a rate that is faster than the growth in cash flow. With our non-standard definition, your equity can grow when the value of the property increases or the mortgage balance decreases – or both. Mortgage amortization typically accelerates over time, so that alone can accelerate the growth in your potential equity. ROE is a simple ratio, so if the equity grows faster than the cash flow, then the Return on Equity will decline over time.

What does this decline mean to you as an investor? It means you have more and more potentially usable, investable cash tied up in this property and that the return on that cash is declining. Is that a bad thing? Not absolutely – it depends on your alternative uses for the money. If you were to refinance and extract some of that equity, could you purchase another property and earn a greater overall return? If you sold, could you use the funds realized to move up to a larger or better property, one with a better long-term upside?

If the answer to any of these questions is yes, or even maybe, then being tuned into to the message from this alternative method calculating ROE can give you the heads-up you need to maximize your investment dollars.

Frank Gallinelli

To make this kind of ROE projection – and to analyze all facets of your income-property investment – use our Real Estate Investment Analysis software with its numerous rate-of-return, cash flow and resale metrics

Copyright 2022,  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. Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash 

 

 


What Happened to Your Property Management?

If you’ve taken my video course, read any of my books, listened to some of the podcasts I’ve been on, then you’re very aware that I often rant about how important it is for you to account for just the real operating operating expenses when you evaluate the worth of a property — no more and no fewer.

There is one mistake I see really often, and I want to call it out here in this video blog.

 

Copyright 2021,  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.

RealData’s Commercial Income Worksheet

The Commercial Income worksheet in RealData’s REIA Pro software is one of its leading power features that makes it a stand-out tool for investment analysis.

 

It’s designed to allow you to enter income from any number of tenants with great flexibility, and to model a lease scenario of any size or shape.

In this video we’ll have a quick overview of how this feature works, and how it can help you when you’re evaluating a commercial income property.

Click here to watch

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Copyright 2020,  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.


“The Top 10 Real Estate Finance Books Every Investor Should Read.”

investment book

I was honored to find that one of my books was featured at the top of a recent article on Motley Fool: “The Top 10 Real Estate Finance Books Every Investor Should Read.” The book, “What Every Real Estate Investor Needs to Know About Cash Flow,” was originally published in 2004, is now in its third edition, and is alive and still doing well —  a surprise certainly to me, and probably to the publisher as well.

 

I often get asked what accounts for the book’s long-term appeal, and I think there may be two reasons: First, I avoided “topical” or trendy content, preferring to stick with core concepts and math-based metrics don’t change with time. And second because I really dislike the get-rich quick hype that seems to characterize so many real estate books, and so I shunned that, too.

I don’t think they’ll ever make a movie out of it, but I’m satisfied if it has helped some readers make informed and unemotional investment decisions.

You can find the article here.


The RealData Software Menu — A Tool to Streamline Your Work

Have you ever had to scramble around a large DIY Excel model to find some key piece of information? Or churned out a ream of paper trying to format a report that a human could actually read?

We’ve all been there. And that’s why we built a unique menu that automatically adds itself to Excel when you run a RealData program.

In this video, we’ll show you how you can use that menu to streamline and simplify your real estate analysis work when you’re using RealData software.

Click here to watch.

In this video, we’ll show you how to use the custom menu that we add to your Excel toolbar whenever you’re using RealData software. It can really make your job a lot easier, especially when you’re working with a powerful program like our Real Estate Investment Analysis, Pro. Edition.

This is the third in our series demonstrating key features of RealData’s software for real estate investors and developers. More to come.

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Copyright 2020,  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.


Leverage the Power of Excel to Extend your RealData Software

In our last post, we introduced our new series of short video that are designed to highlight some of the key features of our applications and help you get the most out of your RealData software. In that video we showed you the how REIA Pro could be used in any of three different modes — a detailed, long-term analysis; a quick analysis; and a short-term view, ideally suited to fix-and flip.

RealData software for real estate investors use Excel as their engine, so they offer you a familiar landscape on which to work. But you can easily go further by expanding on our products to customize them for your specific needs. In this second video, we show you some of the ways you can leverage the power of Excel to extend the functionality of RealData software.

To watch now, just click here.

And stay tuned for our next video, about using the custom menu that all RealData products add to Excel to make your work easier.

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Copyright 2020,  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.


Are you involved in real estate education?

We’re reaching out to our followers who teach real estate investment, development, or finance to let you know that our Real Estate Investment Analysis course is available for the virtual classroom – now with volume academic pricing.

For more than a decade I’ve devoted much of my professional life to investor education, as a writer, Columbia adjunct professor, and through my company RealData. As you may know, a few years ago I created an online video course, Introduction to Real Estate Investment Analysis. It has grown to include a broad range of topics that are key to understanding how income-producing properties work, and how investors, developers, lenders, and others evaluate their financial dynamics.

With so many schools and colleges now needing to provide good content for a virtual learning environment, we’ve re-deployed the course as a resource that instructors can add to their existing curricula. We now offer volume academic pricing at a significant discount, depending on class size.

For an overview, including access to sample lessons, go to the course home page.  To see a complete course outline, click here.

If you’re involved in real estate or financial education, then I hope that this can help you provide meaningful content to your remote learners. To get a quote for volume licenses for student use or to discuss this further, please email me at education@realdata.com.

— Frank Gallinelli

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Copyright 2020,  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 REIA v18 Releases for the New Year – Mac and Windows

With the new year comes the release of REIA version 18 for Mac. This release has all the same features, calculations and reports that are found in the Windows release. Like all of our Mac  products, it will run under Mac Excel/Office 2011 only. We continue to wait for Microsoft to make fixes and improvements to Excel 2016 so that our software will run correctly in that version. REIA v18 on the Mac runs on Excel 2011, Excel 2016 and Excel/Office 365.

Also available for immediate download is a maintenance update for REIA v18 Windows. This update fixes minor issues in the Cover Sheet and Cash Flow / Resale Assumptions reports. Customers who own a license of the software can download the latest build 1.07 from either the Welcome worksheet of their product or via their customer account at realdata.com

Keep track of all latest releases on our builds page.

 


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.

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