Commercial Real Estate Investing For Dummies. Peter Harris
apartment buildings. At some point the successful investors all move up to either big commercial deals or land development.
Coauthor Peter Harris started out investing in real estate by purchasing single-family homes. He did quite well in it, but one day he was daydreaming and said to himself, “What if I could combine all my rental homes under one roof?” He felt that would make managing the properties a lot easier because he wouldn’t have to drive around the city chasing rents. In fact, he realized that he could make better use of the time that he saved by investing even more! When he woke up from his daydream, he realized that he had just described an apartment complex. To make a long story short, he sold all of his rental homes and bought large apartment complexes. And the rest is history. His cash flow went from hundreds per month to thousands per month in only two years.
If he can make it starting out where he did as an introverted engineer, and now he’s buying commercial properties worth millions, you certainly can, too. You see, Peter is simply an average person who applied the ideas in this book to change his life. If he can do it, anyone can use commercial real estate investing to transform their life.
Co-author Peter Conti was working as an auto mechanic when he first got started investing in commercial real estate. He tells his clients that he was “scared to death” when he bought his first property — a small duplex. Peter Conti used the same ideas you’ll be learning about in this book to go from mechanic to millionaire in just three and a half years, and he started out with just $1,500 in the bank! If the Peters who wrote this book can do it, anyone can use commercial real estate investing to transform their life.
Throughout this book, we show you what “good real estate” looks like, and we tell you how to time the real estate market, what markets to stay away from, and how to know a good deal from a bad deal. Then we set you up with some powerful guiding principles of investment to help you move forward.
Categorizing investors
You can fall into one of two basic types of commercial real estate investors. The first is the cash-flow investor, and the second is the long-term hold investor. Both make excellent cases for fantastic wealth building, and both can do well in an up or down market.
Cash-flow investor
Cash-flow investors purchase properties for the purpose of putting monthly income into their pockets. And they buy commercial real estate just like you would buy a business. In other words, if you were buying a ready-made business, you would do whatever it takes to make sure that the business is a proven moneymaker, right? You would thoroughly check the financial records to prove that it could stand on its own every month. Well, cash-flow investors do the same. They take every measure to make sure they’re investing in a property that produces nice monthly cash flow.
Also, cash-flow investors don’t solely rely on appreciation as a way to get wealthy. They know that appreciation is only a bonus, a gift. If it’s present, great. If it isn’t, that’s okay, because the focus is on income. Cash-flow investors know that relying on appreciation is a form of gambling and doesn’t make good business sense. In Chapter 3, we show you how to easily evaluate and calculate cash flow for any income-producing property just like the experts do.
Another plus for cash-flow investors that’s frequently overlooked is the ability to weather the storm in a down market. In down markets sales are slow and prices are falling, and people who normally would buy homes to live in aren’t buying homes due to fear. These folks eventually become tenants for your multiunit commercial properties. This helps cash-flow investors to actually make more money in a down market.
Long-term “hold” investor
Unlike cash-flow investors, long-term “hold” investors rely on appreciation for wealth building, but they do so in a more conservative real-world fashion. They also benefit equity wise from paying down the loan amount over a number of years.
The long-term hold investor’s goals are simple: They want deals with an upside, like the ability to increase the value by improving the cash flow of the property. For example, some of the wealthiest investors we know are our mentors, who are older gentlemen who bought their pieces of commercial real estate decades ago. One of them bought land, and another bought apartments. Their philosophy was “Good real estate will always have a higher value over many years if I wait long enough.” It’s a too-simple strategy that has worked incredibly well for many patient investors. Both of these gentlemen held on to their properties in three separate down-market cycles over the years. Both have properties that are debt free, and they have made millions of dollars since.
In this book, we cover the basic foundational strategies such as “buy good real estate and wait” (Chapter 8) along with many of the more creative, accelerated wealth building strategies just in case you’re in a hurry (Chapter 9).
Crunching the numbers
Honestly, the only requirement needed to crunch numbers is to be able to count to ten with your fingers (or at least be able to use a calculator). What you’ll find is that any type of income-producing property can be analyzed by simply splitting up the deal into three parts:
Income
Expenses
Debt (mortgage payment)
The process for figuring out the cash flow for a 30-unit apartment complex is the same as the process for a single-family home. For instance, say you bought a three-bedroom, two-bath home and you’re renting it for $2,000 per month. As the landlord, you’re responsible for property taxes, insurance, and a landscaper. All those expenses total $600 per month. You also pay $1,000 per month for your mortgage. The tenant pays all other expenses. Here’s a quick formula for figuring out cash flow per month:
Income – expenses – debt = cash flow per month
Using the numbers from the previous single-family home example, here’s the formula in action:
$2,000 (income) – $600 (expenses) – $1,000 (debt) = $400 (cash flow)
Wasn’t too difficult, was it? Now, here’s an example for a 30-unit apartment building. You have 30 two-bedroom units renting for $1,400 per month. That totals $42,000 per month in income. Total expenses for the 30 units are $18,000 per month (which includes taxes, insurance, maintenance, and property management costs). The mortgage payment is $16,500 per month. Here’s how the formula works to find the cash flow per month:
$42,000 (income) – $18,000 (expenses) – $16,500 (debt) = $7,500 (cash flow)
Exploring investing opportunities
Gee, where do we begin to discuss how many types of opportunities you have to choose from when investing in commercial real estate? It may sound cliché, but there’s something for everyone. If you like the cash-flowing dynamics of the apartment business, there are exciting times ahead for you. How about the income growth and stability