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Welcome to Real Talk Real Estate, the show where we cover how to build wealth in real estate with no fluff, no BS and no sales pitches. I'm David Green, and I've been doing this for over 10 years. I've seen the ups, the downs, and everything in between. This is the show where we pull back the curtain and show it to you, too. So if you want to build wealth through real estate or you just love learning about it, you found your home. What's going on, everyone? Welcome to Real Talk Real Estate. This is your favorite show of all the Monday shows, Mortgage Monday. I'm here with the hansing, the charming, the beautiful, the intelligent, the strong. And what were you a purple belt in jiu jitsu back in your day?
B
I was. That's great.
A
Purple belt. Jiu jitsu, Er, Is there a name for jiu jitsu? Judo. People are judokas. Sweaty Rolling. Tootsie Roll himself. Big brain Christian Bachelor. And we've got a hell of a show for you guys today. We're going to be talking about something that we don't talk about very often, commercial real estate. The market is changing rapidly and residential real estate is getting pummeled in many markets across the country. Some are doing good. So you may say this is the first I've heard of this. What, pray tell, are you speaking of, David Green? Well, many markets, Austin, Texas, South Florida, some parts of California are getting devastated as days on market are climbing and prices are dropping. But insurance is going up. Other markets are doing just great. So it's highly localized. And today we're going to be talking about investment options for people that may say, you know what? I dated residential real estate. She broke my heart. I don't want to go back for that. I want to leave and I want to find the girl next door. Commercial real estate. Christian, how are you today?
B
Doing pretty good. Yeah. We got a lot of kind of fun new stuff that we have access to that we'll cover in this episode. So if you guys are interested in that kind of level up, so to speak, or you want to start pursuing an asset type that you may have thought was out of your reach prior, save this video, come back to it, watch it. It's going to be a good one.
A
Yes. Now take a second to subscribe to the video because you're not dumb, you're smart. That's why you would do that. And remember, as you're listening to this, you may think, ooh, I have a question. Why don't they talk about this? I wish they'd make shows about this topic or I wish I could ask David and Christian this question. Head to davidgreen24.com ask. You can upload your video there and I will answer it in a future podcast and I may just be able to bring Christian on to help answer some Seeing Green stuff. So if you're listening to this on YouTube, also consider subscribing to Spotify or Apple where you will get notified of Mortgage Mondays, Real Talk, Realtors, and the David Green show as much real estate content as you can stomach. All right, Christian, let's talk about why people should consider converting to commercial real estate. I've got a couple of reasons in mind, but you're in the trenches. You're dealing with people that are approving for commercial loans, converting the use of properties from one thing to another, as well as dealing with all kinds of different commercial properties. What do you see going on that's working today?
B
So yeah, so we're actually super excited about what we've built and what we have access to in the commercial space. We have access to just about every single commercial lender in the country, from banks to credit unions to small local banks to depository institutions, everything. And that enables us to get our clients the best deals on the commercial program because we can literally take every single bank, put them on the same page, compare them evenly, get you the best deal, right? What it also enables us is to more creatively fund things that other people say no to.
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Right?
B
Because when one doesn't, we can just pivot to another guy right now for commercial specifically. To really get back to answering your question, David, a lot of people will tell you that commercial properties and commercial underwriting and lending is kind of in the dumpster right now. And I can tell you that's mostly true. But not for residential. Multifamily is still doing great. And when I say multifamily, I mean, you know, 10, 15, 20, 100, a thousand unit apartment complexes, right? Or townhomes or condos, whatever you're classifying it as. That industry is not suffering. On the flip side of it, the commercial aspect of the industry that is suffering is office space or, you know, storage warehouses. And not storage like self storage. But I'm talking like, you know, in the 90s, bank of America would go, you know, rent a 100,000 square foot office space to have storage of like files and records, right? They don't need that anymore with the digital age. So those properties have kind of lost a lot of their value. And then obviously offices with the work from Home. You know, that kind of prompted during COVID That is kind of extended now to today. Companies just need less office space. Right. So while that's still kind of settling and we're interested to see, you know, a lot of those are being converted to multifamily because it's a higher and best use. But if you guys are pursuing, obviously on this podcast and pursuing commercial, most of you, I have to imagine, are going to land in the multifamily space and the access to capital is outstanding. It is very, very possible to get a loan to buy a performing or a non performing commercial multifamily asset. And we'll discuss the differences between both of those.
A
All right, so let's sum this up. We have relationships with lenders all across the country. We can do commercial loans for you. We are very competitively priced and we can actually make this not like a root canal. Here's one of the issues that I've had when trying to get commercial loans in the past. The people that you talk to tend to try to sound smarter than they really are. Have you ever ran into a person at a party, Christian, and they're sort of like, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm in marketing and dev tech. And like, they use these phrases that make them sound really smart. And you're like, what do you actually do? And they're like, I find memes and I post it on my company's Instagram page.
B
Right.
A
Commercial lenders will do this. They will speak in terms you don't know, that are far beyond your understanding, that intimidate you. And then you get this feeling like, I don't want to move forward because I don't know what I don't know. Maybe I'm not ready for this. Or you're afraid they're going to hit you with a charge that you don't see coming, which they very likely could do. When they speak in terms you don't understand, it's easy to trick you into not understanding that what they're charging you is not normal for the industry. They don't have to be doing it. You're getting all of the trust and the old town community feel of the one brokerage with a commercial loan. So if you've been struggling with residential, we highly recommend that you reach out to us and talk about what you're looking at. And I like what you mentioned. There's that 5 to 10 unit where people can kind of get their feet wet trying to figure out if this is a asset class that they want to get into. And if you hate it, improve the property, increase your noi, get some tenants in there, and sell it to somebody that does like it 1031 into something bigger. Or if you want to go big, we can help you with that too. There's also something that you mentioned that there's a lot of, like, retransformations going on in the commercial space. Repurposing. So it used to be a corporate office or a medical office, and now we don't need that anymore. And so they're. They're turning it into residential real estate or something along those lines. If you're one of those people that likes to watch hgtv, you're one of those people that says, man, that building, I drive by it all the time and like, nobody ever uses it. We could easily turn that into a strip mall. We could have a Mexican restaurant in there. We could have a ballet studio. We could figure out a way to get this into an area. It's in a great part of town, but the person that owns it isn't doing anything with it. We can help you with that too. We have loans where you can purchase and rehab it, repurpose it, and then refinance out of it into your traditional commercial real estate loan terms, which is really where the DSCR loans that we do, they originated with commercial. We can help you with residential there also. Christian, what's your advice for somebody who is intimidated by commercial real estate? Can you just explain a little bit about how these properties are valued?
B
Yeah.
A
In comparison to residential, which uses the comparable sales approach, 100%, the.
B
The biggest benefit. And it's kind of like a cheat code. Right. Of commercial lending is. Let's. Let's compare it to a. A single house flip. So let's say you find a house that's under market value because it needs work. Right. You put some money into it, you renovate it, and now it's worth what the comparable, you know, the nice comparables in the area are worth. But. But you're artificially limited to the value based on what those comparables are. So if you're in a market that the nicest houses on the block sold for a million dollars, it's very unlikely your house is ever gonna sell for 1.2 or 1.3. Like you just that that's what the market demands in that area for a nice house. Right. With commercial, it's different. And the reason being is that commercial is not valuated based on comparables. Right. So when an appraiser goes out and determines what a House is what a apartment building is worth. They don't go look for other apartment buildings in the area that have sold recently. That's the, what we refer to as the comparable approach. It's an appraisal approach based on comparable sales. Right. The problem with apartment complex is that there's just less of them. So what's the likelihood that you have 100 unit apartment building and there's another 100 unit apartment building that is sold recently? Like it's kind of rare, right? Because these things don't change hands every day. So the comparable approach is not a, is not a good one. Instead they use what's called the income approach, which is a reverse engineering of how much money does this apartment or this commercial asset make. And that has a direct correlation via the cap rate, which is basically a percentage of a kind of like a grade of the market that it's in. You know, some markets are forced 4 caps, some markets are 7 caps. And I'll explain what that means. But it reverse engineers. If it makes this much money in this area, it'll be worth this amount, which is a unique structure because you can take advantage of it. A lot of people who achieve a lot of success in commercial, they come in and in the same way I discussed with the single family flip, they'll come in and they'll increase rents. Whether that's getting out old tenants, whether that's increasing the, you know, value adding to the property so that they can rent it for more, whether that's, you know, stabilizing property management, whatever they have to do. Right. But if you take a commercial asset from making $10,000 a month to 20,000, you actually double the property's value. Right. It's actually increasing not only your net income, and that's good. You obviously want to increase your cash flow. That's the main driving force between behind why people do that value adds and renovations. But instead of just increasing your cash flow like it would in the residential property, you actually also at the same time directly increase the value of the property. So in this situation where you're directly adding revenue, whereas a single family, you'd be capped. Like you just can't get the property above a million dollars. In our situation, your commercial property could kind of be like have an unlimited value, but the higher you get the rents, the more it will be worth. Because the people who buy commercial, they're not buying it for like the value of the structure. Like a lot of people buy residential, like, I'm gonna live in it, I want to raise A family here, you know, it's got a nice school district. Like people don't care in commercial, they care about the dollars. Right. So when investors come in and buy commercial, it's directly attributed to how much money can I make that directly impacts the value of the asset. And this is the same thing. We're talking about apartment complexes. But like if you bought anything, an office, a warehouse, public storage, a production facility, a medical office, a, you know, anything that would. A retail center, a strip mall. Right. All of these are typically valuated on the income approach. How much money can it make? Determines directly how much money it's worth. And you can take advantage of that in between and kind of realize that arbitrage.
A
Right, good point. Now, another difference with how commercial real estate is valued has to do with a cap rate. And we're going to take a minute to talk about cap rates because many of our listeners will have heard the term but not understand what it means. And it's probably the easiest thing to make sound confusing in all of real estate. I don't think there is a more misused phrase than cap rate. So let's get into what this actually means. Cap rate is short for capitalization rate. And here's the way that I like to understand it. It's like philosophically, it's a way of measuring demand for a type of asset class in a specific area. That's its purpose. But technically the best way to start with understanding this is if you bought an apartment complex or a strip mall or a self storage or whatever and you paid cash for it, the cap rate is what you would expect it to cash flow, what you'd expect it to make with no loan. That's, that is, the metric itself is basically just saying it. Now because of that, it's often erroneously used synonymously with your cash on cash return in residential real estate. So you hear someone say, hey, you could buy a triplex at an 8 cap or something that it. Don't listen to people doing this because it's not a phrase that's supposed to be used in residential real estate that would appropriately be spoken of like, hey, you can make a 12% cash on cash return if you put 12% down. The problem is cap rates were developed to tell you what a property would cash flow with no interest rate. Because rates go up and down and down, payments are different for every person. So you can't tell someone what their cash on cash return would be in an apartment complex because there's too many variables. So they go, okay, let's just eliminate the loan at all. There is no down payment, there is no interest rate, There is no amortization period. If there was no loan, this is what it would rent for. That gives you an idea of how much people want it because the higher the price is, the worse the cap rate is going to be. If you have to spend more for it, your return is going to be less. So when you get a low cap, like it's a four cap or a five cap, meaning if you paid cash for that building, you'd get a 4 to a 5% return, that means that a lot of people want it because they've driven the price up really high. And there's a lot of demand for that asset class. If you see something selling at a 12 cap, a lot of investors make the mistake of going, oh, that's good. I want to buy a high one because I want the high cash on cash return. A 12 cap or a 15 cap means it's going to make me a lot of money. The reason it would theoretically make you a lot of money is no one else wants it because you could get it at such a cheap price to give you that kind of a return. There's probably a reason why maybe that the people are leaving the city, maybe the zoning is really difficult. Maybe there's no one that wants to rent there. You can't get VAC tenants to fill it. Or maybe the ones you can get are, are not good tenants. There's a reason that high cap rates exist. So when you're buying commercial property, there's a couple things you want to look for. You want to look for a market where you can buy at a high cap and sell at a low. Because if you buy at a high cap, that's a low price. And if you sell at a low cap, that's a high price. So the idea here is to try to get cap rates moving in your favor. Now, if you want to learn more about this, in my book better than cash flow, the 10 ways you make money in real estate, I have a whole chapter dedicated specific specifically to how you do this with commercial real estate. Really makes it easy to understand. But the other thing you want to look at with commercial real estate is what Christian referred to as. I believe you said it was like the cash flows, but it's. We call it the noi, the income approach, right, the net operating income. So if you're familiar with residential real estate and you've heard people say that your cash flow is your income minus your expenses, this is the Same version of that for commercial real estate. But there's different inputs that you use to calculate your income, and there's different in inputs that you use to calculate your expenses, which would make sense. If you're buying an apartment complex, you're probably making income from the tenant's rent. You're also probably making income from the laundry machines that you might have. You're also making income from the parking that people pay extra for or the self storage that they buy, or whatever little extra perks that you're. Maybe they pay extra for the Internet that you offer, or if you want to have a dog there, you pay a little bit more. There's more things that make up the income than residential real estate. That's just the the rent that your tenant is going to pay. And expenses are going to be much more complicated too. With residential real estate, they're fairly straightforward, but with commercial real estate, you have a lot more expenses. The way you win is you buy something and you increase the income or you decrease the expenses or some combination of the two. That's how you win with noi. Now you also win if you can buy at a higher cap and sell at a lower, which means you bought when there was less demand and you sold when there was more demand. Similar to residential real estate. Right? You want to buy when nobody else is buying and you want to sell when everybody wants it. You bought when there is low demand and sold there was high because you'll sell for more. And if you can increase the rents in residential, that's good for you. But here's the point Christian made earlier. It doesn't benefit you when you sell the house if you increase the rents. It matters to the investor. It doesn't matter the appraiser. It doesn't matter to the person who's just buying the house. And typically you want to avoid selling to investors with rent residential real estate. You want to sell to that family that really wants their house and doesn't know how real estate's valued and they're going to pay a lot more for it. So if you, if you're a numbers person or if what we're saying today makes sense, this may be something for you. You may want to look into commercial real estate and maybe you bring your creative side to the forefront in order to do it. Christian, do you mind just going over another list of various types of commercial real estate that you've seen people that come to the one brokerage trying to finance?
B
Yeah, so like I said, a lot of multifamily that's 10 plus units to be true commercial. And we can do that 5 to 10 unit space as well. We find, I mean, gas stations, one that I see every now and then pop up. Public storage is, is still big. It was huge, you know, five years ago, but still, still get those through mobile home parks. Mobile home parks. Actually buying the park, not the individual mobile home, but the mobile home park isn't as a commercial asset, anything that's retail, a restaurant, a law office, a golf course. I don't know, I'm just thinking of random stuff, right. A bar, you know, anything that has commercial, like business purpose. Right. You know, even, even as far as production or industrial facilities. You know, if you own like a metal fabrication shop and you want to buy the building you're operating out of. Right. We do a lot of, you know, owner occupied purchases, which is somebody, you know, we did one for a dentist a little while ago where a dentist was occupying a medical office. And it was just a single standing structure, you know, looked kind of like a. Not that it's the same thing, but it looks kind of like an ihop, right? Just a standalone building in a strip mall. And we were able to help the guy buy the business, the building that he operates his business out of. Right. And you know, you can get into all the different types of loan products. There's sba, there's bank debt, there's, you know, short term debt. If you want to do renovations, there's a lot of ways to structure it. But the thing that determines them all to be commercial is the asset type. Is it a commercial building? Right, and we can do just about every type of commercial outside of there's like, you know, if there's like some radiation, you know, like the weird one offs, you know, if it's not safe to be there, then no banks don't want to touch it. But everything else otherwise is, you know, fair game.
A
All right, here's three reasons why I think people should consider investing in commercial real estate if these apply to them. Number one, you tried to scale and you realize it was like herding cats. You got a whole bunch of cheap properties. Maybe you bird. When I was burying, I got up to like 50 units or so and it just became burdensome. It was burdensome where every day there's another freaking email of this tenant didn't pay their rent and this roof is leaking and this thing needs to be fixed. And none of it was overwhelming. But when it's like every week you have eight to ten issues that happen. It just Took kind of the fun out of investing in real estate that my property managers were handling, but they were always asking me what to do. If you want to eliminate that, you can take your portfolio. You can 1031 into one building or maybe two to three smaller buildings and have a lot less issues that you have to fix because you have property managers that are going to be fixing those on your behalf. Another reason that you might want to consider going to commercial real estate is you want your tenants to pay for the rising expenses that inflation keeps making worse and worse. When you own a residential property, like a short term rental or just a regular standard rental, when your insurance goes up like it has on Christian and I's properties, it's doubled or tripled. In South Florida, you own all of that. There's no way to pass that on. You could try to raise your rents, but you got to be wherever market rents are. You can't go up higher than that. So your profits either disappear or sometimes you lose money because expenses went up that you, you can't control. When you have commercial properties, most of these are done under triple net leases. So when the insurance goes up or maintenance goes up, you pass that cost on to your tenants and as long as they can afford to do it, you're going to be okay. There's another reason you should consider commercial real estate. The third is you're really good at this. You're just good at investing in real estate. You're good at the spreadsheet, you're good at anticipating costs. You have that gene where you're creative and you're like, oh, we should change the way that this property is set up, or we should change the use from A to B. I could use the garage much better in another way. Or I manage rehabs and they come in under budget and I make them look really good. You should be doing this at scale. That ability is not making you much money if you're doing one house at a time. But if you can do 20 units, 30 units, 40 units with that same skill, your ability turns into a very good return on your time and your energy and your effort. Where you can make six figures or multiple six figures on an apartment complex when that might have led to, you know, saving you 10 grand or something on a residential property. Anything you want to add to that of reasons you think certain people should move into the CRE space?
B
Yeah, I mean, the big one that I've seen is, is tax savings, you know, I mean, being able to leverage, you know, anywhere from 70 up to all the way up to 90 of a commercial purchase, you know, and these are usually big purchases. So obviously, you know, the people that we're talking to have to have the down payment, right? You're not getting into a commercial property for 3% down like you would residential, right. So this is truly, when you're looking to scale up, you have a nest egg, you've done well, you know, and this is kind of the next natural stepping stone. It does require a lot more money in. But I mean I think of like that dentist, right, that we did, we did the loan for. He wrote off all his income that year because of that purchase, right. I mean you can do things with the purchase of commercial real estate that really puts, puts you in a beneficial tax position. And with talks of, you know, the big beautiful bill and everything going on, 100 bonus depreciation is scheduled to come back. So that means if you were to buy one of these, you know, if you were to buy a million, 2 million, 3 million dollar commercial property, it's very possible you get a multiple hundred thousand dollar write off, like multiple hundreds, 3, 4, 5, $600,000 direct write off against your taxable income. Consider the amount of money that could save you if you're a higher income earner, right? A doctor, a lawyer, architect, a contractor, you know, somebody making good money. You buy one of these bad boys and you wipe out your tax income probably for multiple years. Unless you're like a really high earner. Right. But you're, you're saving a lot.
A
Let's look at the example of a house flipper that makes $250,000 in a year. And so they have a lot of income, but they're paying short terms capital gains taxes on that. So if their profits to 50, they're probably paying. What do you think the short term capital gains depends on where they live.
B
I mean in California they're probably playing close to 50%.
A
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. So let's make it 40% just to make this easier. 40, I shouldn't have said 250. I made this harder on us, right? So like 10% of that is 20, 25 grand. And you got four of those 100 grand that you're going to have to go, right, $100,000 in taxes. Now you go buy an apartment complex where you have to, let's say you buy it for a million dollars and so your down payment was 200 grand. Well now you had a hundred grand that would have gone to taxes, but instead it goes to the down payment on this apartment complex, you're getting half of your down payment that would have went to taxes instead covering this apartment complex. So the tax savings that the apartment gets you contributes.
B
And in all reality you probably get the full down payment because buying a million dollar apartment complex, if you 100 bonus depreciate that in year one, you're getting a 250 to $300,000 write off, typically 100% bonus egg will be 20 to 30% of your purchase price. So I mean if we're talking right around that, a 250k tax write off that covers what a little over two years of your, I guess one year, your taxable income. Right. But you, you could really start scaling these and like David says, instead of paying the money to taxes, if that just gets rolled into new real estate, you can kind of shield your income every year. And that's all these people, you know, the Kiyosakis and the Trumps and all these people would say I don't pay taxes because I'm not stupid. Right. Like they're not not stupid. They're just buying real estate like it's not like it's rocket science. They're just depreciating the real estate that they buy utilizing the tax benefits that come with that and rolling that money that would go into taxes into new real estate and doing it every year and they eventually get away like these talking heads have with you know, paying 10, 15, 20 years of no taxes. Right?
A
Yep. Now I'll add another bonus method. So we've got three plus years is four. I'll add a fifth one. There could be a reset of of prices on commercial real estate because so many people bought them when rates were low and now they're forced to refinance them and rates are higher. So if this is your first time hearing of it, you're used to loans that are 30 year fixed rate. That's how most residential real estate spot. You will not get those terms. On a commercial property you will typically get somewhere between three to five. It could be up to 10 years fixed. The mortgage mutt is a huge fan of commercial real estate.
B
He heard that no 30 year fixed.
A
Yeah, I was born to stay away from those. That's with residential property we try to get you into a 30 year fix on all the loans for residential property. But on commercial properties that's not going to happen. So what you got was a bunch of people that were buying them when rates were really low. Well when rates are low, everybody wants them. When everybody wants Them cap rates go down. When rates go up, less people want them. That means cap rates go up. And as we said earlier, when cap rates go up, prices go down. So now you have a bunch of people that are forced to refinance or forced to sell because that balloon payment's coming due, but the price is much less than when they bought it. That sucks for them. Actually. I have a lot of sympathy for these people because when they bought them, they had no idea that the government was going to do this. But that's good for you if you're looking to step into it. Much like if you bought a property like say four years ago and you paid a high price and then inflations destroy the value of residential real estate, you're getting hurt. You wish you could have bought in 2010 when prices were low. We may have a version of that coming along in commercial real estate. It probably won't be as easy as 2010, but you'll definitely be getting better prices. So if you're looking for where the new trend is going, it's probably going to be commercial real estate. So we've got loans available for you. We weren't really offering them much before, but as we've seen that this is where opportunity is. We've restructured and paid quite a bit of money, to be frank, to be able to offer commercial loans to the one brokerage clients at really, really good prices, which is kind of the pet peeve of Christian and I. When lenders are nice to you and they're smooth and they use big words and they make you feel special and then you don't know how to read a loan estimate so they rip you off. We give the same service to everyone, whether it's your mom, whether it's my mom, or whether it's a commercial real estate investor. And as you guys can see from the show that just aired before this one, we break down alone, I spent like nobody else does. We show you exactly what to look at on there. And our loan officers are trained to do the same. So if you know a loan officer, we need more of them. We really do. A lot of people are coming to us to get these loans. We need more people to service them. Don't send them to us if they're a bad person, but they have integrity and they're a smart person. We want to hire them. And if you want a loan, we want to hear from you too. Christian, where can people go to get a hold of you specifically?
B
Yep, the one brokerage.com it's our it's our website. You can find out more about what we do there. If you want to reach out to me directly, I'm on Instagram @the1 broker, shoot me a direct message. We can get in contact, schedule time to talk and talk about commercial properties or any of the other programs that we offer. Remember guys, we're not just investor lenders. We can help you buy your first home, right? If you want a house hack and follow kind of the first starting steps and eventually get your way to commercial. We can help you literally every single step of the way. We're built to do every type of loan product on real estate.
A
Great point there. And also if you're listening to this, thank you, I really appreciate it. There is more options than ever to listen to real estate content and some of them are good. The vast majority of them are slick marketers that are much smarter than me when it comes to giving you what they want. They're kind of online drug dealers. They just don't have as good of content and they don't give it to you straight. And so if you're choosing to come here and you're not taking the bait, I really appreciate you and I do want to hear from you since I Sincerely so headed davidgreen24.com Ask you can submit your question or if you're shy, you don't want to be on camera, you can also message me directly@davidgreen24.com There's a chat option goes right to my cell phone. Messages come in when I'm recording all the time and I do my best to get back to everybody. So if you want to get put in touch with the loan officer, if you want to get put in touch with a real estate agent, if you have questions about your particular deal, if you want to attend one of the retreats that we do, whatever it is, whatever's on your mind right now, if you're just scared about what AI AI might be doing to the market, I'm here for you. Let me know and then please comment on the video. Let us know what you thought, if you learned something and what you'd like to see in future videos. This is David Green for Christian Big Brain BR signing off.
Podcast Summary: The David Greene Show – "Mortgage Monday - Is Commercial Real Estate for You?" | Episode 69
Podcast Information:
David Greene kicks off the episode with an engaging introduction, emphasizing the focus on commercial real estate (CRE)—a topic not frequently discussed on the show. He highlights the current volatility in the residential real estate market, noting that while some areas like Austin, Texas, South Florida, and parts of California are experiencing declining prices and rising days on market, CRE presents a viable alternative for investors seeking stability and growth.
David Greene: "The market is changing rapidly and residential real estate is getting pummeled in many markets across the country. [...] Commercial real estate could be the girl next door you're looking for." (00:34)
His co-host, Christian, complements David by outlining their access to a vast network of commercial lenders nationwide, enabling them to secure the best deals and creatively fund projects that others might decline.
Christian: "We have access to just about every single commercial lender in the country [...] What works today may shift, but our connections ensure continuous opportunities." (02:51)
David and Christian delve into the intricacies of commercial lending, contrasting it with their past experiences in residential loans. They discuss how commercial properties—especially multifamily units ranging from 10 to over 1,000 units—are thriving despite challenges in other commercial sectors like office spaces and large storage facilities.
Christian: "Multifamily is still doing great. [...] Access to capital is outstanding, and it is very, very possible to get a loan to buy a performing or a non-performing commercial multifamily asset." (03:25)
Christian explains that while traditional office spaces are dwindling due to the digital age and the rise of remote work, multifamily properties remain resilient. The discussion extends to the potential conversion of underperforming commercial assets into multifamily units, highlighting an emerging trend in the industry.
David Greene: "There's a lot of repurposing going on in the commercial space. [...] We can help repurpose properties into more lucrative uses, such as residential real estate or retail spaces." (05:46)
A significant portion of the episode focuses on how commercial properties are valued differently from residential ones. David explains the Income Approach, which assesses a property's value based on its income-generating potential, unlike the Comparable Sales Approach used in residential real estate.
Christian: "Commercial is valuated based on the income approach. [...] How much money can it make determines how much it's worth." (07:42)
David provides a clear analogy comparing a single-family home flip to a commercial property investment. He emphasizes that increasing the Net Operating Income (NOI) of a commercial property can directly double its value, a leverage not possible in residential flipping due to market cap constraints.
David Greene: "If you take a commercial asset from making $10,000 a month to $20,000, you actually double the property's value." (10:00)
They further discuss cap rates—a critical metric in CRE that measures the return on investment based on the property's income. David clarifies common misconceptions, distinguishing cap rates from cash on cash returns and explaining their significance in gauging market demand.
David Greene: "Cap rate is short for capitalization rate. It's a way of measuring demand for a type of asset in a specific area." (11:46)
Christian enumerates the diverse types of commercial properties they encounter, providing listeners with a broad understanding of CRE's versatility. The categories include:
Christian: "We do a lot of owner-occupied purchases, like a dentist buying a medical office. [...] We can handle almost every type of commercial asset." (17:24)
This segment underscores the breadth of opportunities within CRE, indicating that commercial properties can cater to various investment strategies and personal interests.
David presents three primary reasons to consider investing in CRE:
Scalability: Transitioning from multiple small residential properties to fewer, larger commercial ones reduces management burdens and increases efficiency.
David Greene: "If you have a bunch of cheap properties, it becomes burdensome with constant issues. Investing in CRE allows you to streamline and manage fewer assets more effectively." (19:18)
Passing on Expenses: Commercial properties often utilize triple net leases, where tenants are responsible for property taxes, insurance, and maintenance, mitigating the landlord's expense risks.
David Greene: "With commercial properties, most are done under triple net leases. So when your insurance goes up, you pass that cost on to your tenants." (21:50)
Tax Benefits: CRE offers substantial tax advantages, including significant depreciation write-offs. Christian elaborates on leveraging these benefits to shield income from taxes effectively.
Christian: "You can depreciate the real estate you buy and roll those tax savings into new investments, potentially creating a pathway to long-term tax-free income." (23:20)
Additionally, David introduces a fifth reason—the potential reset of CRE prices due to rising interest rates. As rates increase, cap rates rise, leading to lower property prices, presenting lucrative buying opportunities for new investors.
David Greene: "As interest rates go up, cap rates go up, and prices go down. This is an opportunity to buy at better prices in the CRE market." (25:58)
The episode concludes with a strong encouragement for listeners to explore CRE opportunities. David and Christian invite interested individuals to reach out through their website, the1brokerage.com, or directly via Instagram (@the1broker). They emphasize their commitment to providing transparent, straightforward service without the jargon and hidden fees often associated with commercial lending.
David Greene: "We break down loans like nobody else does. [...] If you're a numbers person or find this content aligns with your investment strategy, reach out to us." (28:08)
Christian echoes this sentiment, highlighting their broad range of loan products and readiness to assist both novice and seasoned investors.
Christian: "We're not just investor lenders. We can help you buy your first home or scale up to commercial properties. We're built to handle every type of real estate loan." (28:42)
David wraps up by expressing gratitude to listeners, encouraging engagement through questions and comments, and reaffirming their dedication to providing honest, valuable real estate insights.
David Greene: "Thank you for listening. Let us know what you learned and what you'd like to see in future episodes. This is David Green for Christian Big Brain BR signing off." (28:42)
Conclusion: In Episode 69 of The David Greene Show, David and Christian provide a comprehensive exploration of commercial real estate, presenting it as a robust investment avenue amid residential market challenges. They elucidate the operational, financial, and strategic advantages of CRE, equipped with clear explanations and actionable insights. Whether you're a seasoned investor looking to scale or a newcomer seeking new opportunities, this episode serves as a valuable guide to understanding and venturing into the commercial real estate landscape.