When assessing commercial real estate, it is necessary to understand the financial factors the property creates before you price it or consider it suitable for purchase. You need to look at not only the financial factors today but also those that have shaped the property’s history over recent years.
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In this case, ‘recent time’ is the last three or five years. It is surprising how property owners try to manipulate the building income and expenditure at the time of sale; however, they cannot easily change the property history. This is where you can uncover many property secrets. Once the property’s history and current performance are fully understood, you can relate to the accuracy of the current operating costs budget. All investment property should operate to a budget that is administered monthly and monitored quarterly.
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The quarterly monitoring process allows for budget adjustments when unusual income and expenditure items are evident. There is no point continuing with the property budget, which is increasingly out of balance with the actual property performance. Fund managers in complex properties would normally undertake budget adjustments every quarter. The same principle can and should apply to private investors.
So let’s now look at the main issues of financial analysis on which you can focus in your property evaluation:
- A tenancy schedule should be sourced for the property and checked totally. You are seeking an accurate summary of the current lease occupancy and rentals paid. Notably, tenancy schedules are notoriously incorrect and not up to date in many instances. This common industry problem stems from the property owner’s lack of diligence or the property manager’s to maintain the tenancy schedule records. For this very reason, the accuracy of the tenancy schedule at the time of property sale needs to be carefully checked against the original documentation.
- Property documentation reflecting all types of occupancy should be sourced. This documentation typically includes leases, occupancy licenses, and tenant-side agreements. You should expect some of this documentation not to be registered on the property title. Solicitors are familiar with chasing down all property documentation and will know the correct questions to ask the previous property owner. Do an extensive due diligence process with your solicitor before any settlement is completed when in doubt.
- All lease documentation’s rental guarantees and bonds should be sourced and documented. These matters protect the landlord at the time of default on the part of the tenant. They should pass it on to the new property owner at the time of settlement. How this is achieved will be subject to the type of rental guarantee or bond, and it may even mean that the guarantee needs to be reissued at the time of sale and settlement to a new property owner. Solicitors for the new property owner(s) will normally check this and offer solutions at the sale. Importantly, rental guarantees and bonds must be legally collectible by the new property owner under the terms of any existing lease documentation.
- Understanding the rental charged across the property is essential to property performance. It is common for various rentals to be charged across the different leases in a single property with multiple tenants. This means that net and gross leases can be evident in the same property and impact the outgoing landlord’s position differently. The only way to fully appreciate and analyze the complete rental situation is to read all leases in detail.
- The next part of your analysis should be looking for outstanding charges on the property. These charges would normally stem from the local council and its rating processes. It could be that special charges have been raised on the property as a Special Levy for the precinct.
- Understanding the outgoing charges for the properties in the local area is critical to your property analysis. It would help to compare the outgoing averages for similar properties locally to the subject property you are involved in. There needs to be parity or similarity between the properties in the same category. If any property has significantly higher outgoings for any reason, then that reason has to be identified before any sale process or a property adjustment is considered. Property buyers do not want to purchase something that is a financial burden above the industry’s outgoing averages.
- The depreciation schedule for the property should be maintained annually so that its advantages can be integrated into any property sales strategy when the time comes. The depreciation available for the property allows the income to be reduced, and hence, less tax paid by the landlord. It is normal for the accountant for the property owner to compile the depreciation schedule annually at tax time.
- The rates and taxes paid on the property need to be identified and understood. They are closely geared to the property valuation undertaken by the local council. The council valuation timing is usually every two or three years and will significantly impact the rates and taxes paid in that valuation year. Property owners should expect reasonable rating escalations when a property valuation is undertaken. It pays to check when the local council will undertake the next property valuation in the region.
- The survey assessment of the site and tenancy areas in the property should be checked or undertaken. It is common for discrepancies to be found in this process. It would help if you were looking for surplus space in the building common area, which can be reverted to tenancy space in any new initiative. This surplus space becomes a strategic advantage when refurbishing or expanding the property.
- In analyzing the historical cash flow, you should look for any impact from rental reduction incentives and vacancies. It is common for rental reduction to occur at the tenancy lease as a rental incentive. When you find this, the documentation that supports the incentive should be sourced and reviewed for accuracy and ongoing impact on the cash flow. You do not want to purchase a property only to find your cash flow reduced annually due to an existing incentive agreement. If these incentive agreements exist, getting the existing property owner to discharge or adjust the incentive’s impact at the time of property settlement is desirable. In other words, the existing property owner should compensate the new owner for the discomfort the incentive creates in the property’s future.
- The current rentals in the property should be compared to the market rentals in the area. It can be that the property rent is out of balance with the market rentals in the region. If this is the case, it pays to understand the impact this will create in leasing any new vacant areas that arise and negotiating new leases with existing tenants.
- The threat of market rental falling at the time of rent review can be a real problem in this slower market. If the property has upcoming market rent review provisions, the leases must be checked to identify if the rental can fall at that market review time. Sometimes, the lease has special terms that can prevent the rent from going down even if the surrounding rent has done that. We call these clauses ‘ratchet clauses’, inferring that the ‘ratchet’ process stops lower market rents from happening. Be careful here, though, because some retail and other property legislation can prevent using or implementing the ‘ratchet clause.’ If in doubt, see a good property solicitor.
These are critical financial elements to consider when assessing a Commercial Investment Property. Analyze the property’s income and expenditures before making final property price choices or acquisitions.
