Real Estate Financial Modeling Accelerator (Updated October 2024)
Prior to launching the Accelerator program, Michael and I fielded email after email requesting a more structured real estate financial modeling training program on the site.
Over the years, we've covered hundreds of real estate modeling…
How to Quickly Evaluate Real Estate Opportunities (Without Opening Excel)
We regularly respond to questions from A.CRE and Accelerator members as it relates to analyzing and evaluating real estate investment opportunities. Recently, in an Accelerator forum post a young professional marveled at how certain individuals…
All You Need to Know About Real Estate Gross-Ups
"Gross-up" clauses have caused confusion, and occasionally consternation, amongst tenants signing commercial leases for the first time. While many tenants are happy to pay for building services they use on a daily basis, many are riled when…
Roll Up Your Monthly Cash Flow Line Items Into Annual Periods Using Only One Formula For The Whole Sheet
While building out my hotel development model (currently underway), I decided to take a break and record a video about how I roll up the monthly cash flow line items on my Monthly Cash Flow sheet into annual cash flow line items on a separate…
30/360, Actual/365, and Actual/360 – How Lenders Calculate Interest on CRE Loans – Some Important Insights
(Updated August 7, 2019 to include a Watch Me Build video and Downloadable file)
Commercial real estate lenders commonly calculate loans in three ways: 30/360, Actual/365 (aka 365/365), and Actual/360 (aka 365/360). Real estate professionals…
Deep Dive: Understanding Acquisitions: The Letter of Intent (LOI)
The Letter of Intent - Legal Issues
The letter of intent is a critical document that is written up at the beginning of a potential real estate transaction between either a prospective buyer and seller or a prospective tenant and landlord.…
Excel-Based Restaurant Selection Tool for the Overly Indecisive
We're celebrating some much deserved time off from work, and so what better way to spend the time than to make a completely unnecessary (but fun!) Excel model. I call this the indispensable Excel tool for the overly indecisive, and it's basically…
Hotel Proforma Basics – Hotel Cash Flow Projection
Hotels are a unique asset in the commercial real estate world and are underwritten differently as a result. Probably the most obvious difference is the duration of the 'lease term' of the tenant, which is usually daily to weekly. Another major…
Understanding Treatment of Time 0 in the All-in-One Model
I received a very astute question/concern from a user of our All-in-One(Ai1) model in our Ai1 Support Forum late last month. I initially set out to answer the question in writing, but the more I thought about my response, the more I concluded…
All About Cap Ex
In this post, we are going to take a deeper look into capital expenditures. What it is and how we account for it in cre underwriting.
Capital expenditures, commonly referred to as Cap Ex, are expenses that occur outside of normal operating…
The A.CRE Method For Doing Cap Rate Mental Math – Practice Tool
At the bottom of this post is a downloadable practice tool for the A.CRE Method for doing cap rate mental math. The tool will generate an endless number of random cap rates and NOIs to practice with and will walk you step by step through how…
The State of Real Estate Crowdfunding
Following the housing crash of 2007 - as regulations were introduced and credit tightened - emerging companies were left with little or no access to the capital markets. In an effort to ameliorate the credit crunch, Congress drew up the Jumpstart…
San Francisco Development Explosion! – Interactive Map & Side Project
San Francisco's downtown area is currently going through an unprecedented, skyline redefining transformation. So many incredible developers and architects are in the process of leaving their mark on this city and it's all happening or will…
Understanding Taxes Series: Part 2 – Exceptions to The PAL Rules
The PAL Rules - A Brief Background
The PAL Rules, or Passive Activity Loss Rules, were enacted in 1986 to curb rampant abuses from people using real estate and businesses to generate huge losses to offset income taxes. It used to be that you…
Understanding Taxes Series: Part 1 – Depreciation
Investing in real estate provides some tremendous tax incentives in the USA compared to other investments and is an important component to understanding real estate investing. Given the positive response I've received to my Understanding Leases…