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IS A REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT AS GOOD AS A FINANCIAL BOND?

In the April 9^th issue of the Wall Street Journal there is a very thought provoking headline;  “New Era, In Bonds; Zero Yield or Less” Tradeweb shows a  government-bond yield for Switzerland of (-1.0%) …yes negative 1% per year.  This means if you invest $100,000 for five years you will receive back $95,000.  This is in part a result of the ECB  European Central Bank charging commercial banks to keep money on deposit.  Banks and Lenders are unable to invest their deposits at a rate greater than the cost of maintaining deposits.

The intended better result for an investor is to own investment real estate.  Even with a nominal annual income, this investment should over a 5 year period appreciate, not depreciate in value.  For example, consider the purchase of a residential condo unit.  If the purchase price is $200,000 and is financed with a loan of $150,000 at 4% interest for 30 years the annual loan cost is $8,593 or $716 per month.  If the real estate taxes and condo fees are an additional $600 per month the total expenses for a 5 year holding period would be $78,960.  If the apartment is rented for $1,000 per month the net cost will be ($78,960-$72,000 =  -$6,960) over the 5 year period.

If the value of the apartment appreciates only 2% per year the value in 5 years will be $220,000.  The investment returns 4.6% per year.  If the apartment appreciates at 4% per year the value in 5 years will be $240,000.  The investment will then return 11% per year.

This return is not without some aggravation and risk.  You will need to rent the apartment and collect rent each month, pay the condo fees, mortgage payments and real estate taxes.  An additional risk you have are increasing expenses and periods of vacancy.

But when you consider the alternatives of investing in a savings at rates below ¼ of 1% or less, the risk may justify the effort.  This explains the interest by investors in purchasing condo unit and other types of simple investments.

Last week at the Commercial Industrial Association of South Florida presentation on “The rEvolution of the Industrial Market”, the inventory of industrial warehouse space in Miami-Dade was estimated at 200 million square feet. As in my last newsletter, I like to relate this to something I can imagine.

The shipping industry uses a standard shipping container with a length of 40’, a width of 8’, and a height of 9.5’. Therefore, a container would occupy 320 square feet of floor space and has a volume of 3,040 cubic feet. If the South Florida market contains 200,000,000 square feet of floor space with say 20% used for loading and access – then 200,000,000 minus 40,000,000 = 160,000,000 SF. And if each container requires 320 SF of floor space, then the South Florida Industrial Market could store 500,000 cargo containers, if single stacked.

If 500,000 containers were in a line, they would stretch for (500,000 X 40’) = 20,000,000 feet or over 3,700 miles. This is greater than the distance from Miami to Vancouver , Canada. Another way to imagine this many containers is their cubic capacity. A 50” TV can be shipped in a box occupping (5’X1’X3’) or 15 cubic feet. If a 40’ shipping container has a 3,040 cubic foot capacity, each could hold 200 TV’s. Therefore, 500,000 containers could hold 100,000,000 TV’s.

Now I realize that this is over the top, and the net floor space is actually much less, but still – 200,000,000 SF of industrial space can contain a very large quantity of goods for local consumption, trans-shipment or used for local manufacturing.

As real estate brokers, we are always trying to understand the supply and demand for real estate products and its impact on prices. The way we do this is to measure things in a different way.

By Tom Dixon

We use signs and indicators in our daily lives to tell us what to expect. For real estate business decisions, there are some very interesting and also odd indicators that reflect the current business climate that can give indications of future trends.

If you were interested in investing in a restaurant, wouldn’t it be nice to know how well this restaurant and others in the area were doing. My wife and I were having dinner in Coconut Grove and in strolled “The Flower Guy”. Every night, he goes into every restaurant, singing opera songs and selling fresh roses. If you want to know how business is doing, you might just ask “The Flower Guy”.

We have an office in a highrise office building, and every day I see “The UPS Man” delivering packages to our floor. If you what to know general business trends, you could ask the “UPS Man”. He knows by the volume of packages how the economy is doing. In fact, UPS must make decisions on the future of the economy so they have enough trucks and drivers, but not too many.

Many years ago a friend of mine said he could predict the amount of new home construction before anyone. He just had to ask “The Survey Stake Man”. This is the man who cuts the wooden stakes used by surveyors to lay out subdivisions and new homes. The first thing a builder has to do to start building is have the site surveyed and lay out the foundations. As the demand for survey stakes changes, we can expect a change in new home construction.

If you were investing in a hotel or motel, wouldn’t it be great to be able to verify the occupancy for the past several months to see how well this hotel is doing compared to the competition ? Just ask “The Linen Man”. He picks up the soiled linen and delivers the clean linen. He knows exactly how much business his clients are doing each week. Or you could ask “The Bakery Man”. He delivers fresh bread and rolls each day. Hotels are only going to order enough baked goods for their daily guests.

A quick way to check up on the operation of an office building or shopping center is to track the number of cars in the parking lots. If the lot is empty, it could mean a shortage of tenants or customers. On the other hand, if the parking lot is full, it might suggest this is a good place to help tenants relocate to larger spaces. Or you could ask “The Parking Attendant”, he can tell you if the number of visitors has changed and also the occupancy level in the parking garage.

If you want to know the status of real estate sales activity, just ask the “Sign Man”. As the economy cools down, real estate prices don’t generally decline, but the amount of sales activities do decline, with a resulting decrease in the demand for new “For Sale” signs. Although I asked my “Sign Man” if there was a change in the number of signs he painted, he said that the number of signs was the same but oftentimes, signs were for the same companies. This is a indication of companies merging with others.

These and other indicators can help you make real estate and business decisions based on very direct local market indicators.

Call us – we know how to read the signs and indicators of the real estate market.

ALL YOU NEED IS THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND A DEBIT CARD
If you enjoy traveling and speak the English language, the world is yours. We have traveled to many countries including Spain, Italy and most recently – Greece. Everywhere we traveled, English is the universal language. Our son Andrew went on his honeymoon to South Korea and Japan and again, English speakers were everywhere.

Another traveling concern is obtaining cash. The travel books suggest going to the country and get local currency at an ATM machine. But somehow, this always makes me nervous – what if my card is rejected, stolen or damaged. After making sure the card company knows where I will be using the card and by taking a different card as a precaution, we had no trouble getting Euros at an ATM on our last trip. Contrast this to 15 years ago before ATM machines when each European country had a different currency which made understanding the value of the currency very difficult.

This started me thinking how lucky we are to speak the universal language. But why is English the universal language? Could it be because so many Hollywood movies are in English? Maybe it’s because of computers; most computer programs are written first for English language users. When we English speakers have trouble understanding how to use a computer, just imagine how hard it is if you don’t speak the language. Then there is Google, Wikipedia and all the other information sources for which we use English as the base language. Not just what you can see, the code (HTML) behind it uses English words as a base.

While we were on a small cruise ship in Greece, it was interesting that some of the crew were from Greece and spoke Greek and English and other crew were from Ukraine and spoke Ukrainian and English but not Greek. Because of this communication among the crew was English to English, again English being the common language.
Now of course, English is not the perfect language and can be confusing and there are certain words that are clearer in other languages. For example, in English “hot” can mean it will burn you and also that it is hot on the tongue “spicy”. Whereas, Spanish has two words for hot: “caliente” for when it will burn you, but “picante” if it’s hot and spicy in the mouth.

So although English may be the universal language, it’s very helpful to know other languages both because they can clarify your meaning and add spice to your world.

Call us if you would like to add spice to your real estate investments.

By Tom Dixon