It's not easy being green

It’s not easy being green

Green is a beautiful thing.  It is the color of grass, the color of money and the somewhat universal name given to something that is good for the environment.  I am not trying to go all Kermit the Frog on you, but I do want to talk about the green basis that seems to be used for energy efficiency ratings on new homes, the HERS index. 

HERS stands for Home Energy Rating System and has become the standard to define the energy efficiency rating of a home.  I think this is a great idea.  However, I do believe that the information is somewhat misleading.  The rating claims that a Standard New Home has a basis of 100.  Therefore, any home that has a HERS rating lower than 100 is more energy efficient than a Standard New Home.  Once again, this sounds great.  In fact, homebuilders are continually touting how their homes have HERS ratings well below the Standard New Home benchmark.  This is where the problem comes into play.  I am not aware of any new home builders that build standard homes to a HERS rating of 100.  Whether it be due to in-house construction improvements or changes to local building codes, every new home builder that I am aware of builds all their homes to a HERS rating less than 100.  This allows all builders to promote how green their construction practices are.

This is great for the builders and they should all be applauded for building better and more efficient homes.  However, wouldn’t it be more appropriate for the HERS standard to be adjusted on a yearly basis?  In reality, if construction practices and building codes are improving every year, shouldn’t the standard rating bar be moved every year as well?

I agree that a home that is more efficient that the Standard New Home is a very energy efficient home.  Just show me where they are building new homes to a 100 HERS rating for comparison.  Otherwise, change the bar on a regular basis so that we can get a better idea as to which new home builders are being truly innovative in their green building construction practices.

Our old pal Kermit once sang “It’s not easy being green!”  Let’s raise the bar and keep it that way.

Until next time…

Keep kicking the dirt!

Jeff Gersh is President of Gersh Consulting Services, a real estate advisory firm, headquartered in Orlando, FL.  He may be reached at jsgersh@gmail.com or 407-468-9328

 

 

 

Twas the month before year end

Twas the month before year end

 
The holidays are near
Oh yes, what a sight
We want to be happy
But the numbers are light
We had set up our budgets
With high hopes and good cheer
Though now do we panic
As the year end looms near
To turn the corner we planned
New sales they would soar
The recession behind us
Of that we were sure
Not just a few were expected
But a ton of new sales
We felt strong about the market
We would emblazon new trails
Large acreage had been purchased
New lots now secured
We were set for the budget year
Of that we were assured
New sales they would come
We knew that this year would be great
We staffed up for the increase
Sure to have a full plate
But our eyes were too big
A large jump was the lure
In both contracts and closings
Our thoughts they were pure
And now we find ourselves short
Not by a lot, but enough
Our bonuses will suffer
It may get bumpy, a little bit rough
We must move out the inventory
Great year end prices to sell
So at the end of December
We will have a good story to tell
Such is the tale of the builder
To do the best is their plight
While making guesses for the future
And hoping the year end is bright!

Until next time…

Keep kicking the dirt!

Jeff Gersh is President of Gersh Consulting Services, a real estate advisory firm, headquartered in Orlando, FL.  He may be reached at jsgersh@gmail.com or 407-468-9328

 

 

 

 

The Past Becomes Present

The Past Becomes Present

It has been said that if you live long enough, you will see just about everything.  With the advent of the internet and Youtube, I don’t think you have to be around that long anymore.  However, I do believe that the longer you are around, the wiser you will become through experience.

When I first entered real estate in the 1980s, times were booming.  In fact, I am told that more commercial real estate was constructed during the decade of the 1980s than had previously been built during the whole prior history of mankind.  That is a lot of square footage.  The upside was limitless.  That was a heady time as I was learning the ins and outs of commercial real estate development.  However, like with Icarus, the wings reached too close to the sun and the commercial markets came crashing down in the early nineties, bringing the rest of the real estate world with it.

Real estate, though, is a resilient industry.  After all, everyone needs a place to work and a place to live.  Like the mythical phoenix, real estate rose from the ashes with securitized financing and with opportunity funds swooping in to take advantage of distressed assets.  During this time, I cut my teeth on transactional activities, consummating over $500MM worth of real estate transactions.

As real estate, led by the residential markets, began a resurgence in the mid 1990s, I jumped on board for that ride as well.  I planned, developed and built some highly amenitized residential and active adult communities.  What started off as a stream soon became a torrent as the residential markets took off to valuations previously unheard of in prior real estate booms.  However, when you hear that waiters are flipping multiple condo contracts for a profit before the units deliver, you know the apocalypse is near.  This time, the residential markets led the downturn.  100%+ financing with no income verification loans is not a very smart way to conduct homebuyer lending practices.  Everyone learned that real estate is a true investment.  As with any investment, sometimes it goes up and sometimes it goes down.  It was a tough lesson for many people.

We now find ourselves in a tenuous real estate recovery.  Most people feel that the worst is behind us.  However, one eye remains firmly focused on the economy to see if it will continue to lead us to renewed prosperity or back into a new recession.  Either way, the real estate industry will present astute investors and developers with new opportunities in one form or another.  It always does.

So, why the history lesson?  One answer is that those who disregard the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat them.  Unfortunately, it seems that real estate mistakes appear to repeat themselves every twenty years or so regardless of the lessons learned.  The second reason for the review is a gratuitous plug for myself.  While my journey to date has been enjoyable, I am looking for my next opportunity to continue the ride.  For those of you who enjoy my blog and feel my skills and knowledge (and hopefully humor) may be of benefit to your organization, or to other opportunities you may be aware of, I encourage you to message me as to how I may be able to enhance your operations.  For everyone else, I remain humbled by your readership and I look forward to continuing to supply enlightening and witty insights into the real estate industry on a fairly regular basis.

Until next time…

 

Keep kicking the dirt!

Jeff Gersh is President of Gersh Consulting Services, a real estate advisory firm, headquartered in Orlando, FL.  He may be reached at jsgersh@gmail.com or 407-468-9328

C'mon Lucky Sevens!

C’mon Lucky Sevens!

 I am typically not one given over to speculation and hyperbole.  I do not play the odds and I am no good at the casinos.  However, let me be among the first people to point to the coming downturn in investment grade commercial and apartment properties.  This has nothing to do with overbuilding as was the case in the 1980s or the drunken lending practices of the 2000s.  This is purely related to today’s low interest rate environment.

Consider the bond market for ease of comparison.  If you invest long term in low interest rate bonds, and then rates start to increase, the value of your bonds will decrease.  The same principal holds true for real estate capitalization rates and commercial properties. 

Let’s look at investment grade apartment complexes and office buildings as examples.  For Class A properties, you have average cap rates between 4.5% - 7.5%, give or take.  You also have had relatively little new construction over the past 5 years.  Now that the future is looking somewhat brighter, coupled with stagnant supply and low rates, you have a high demand and low cap rate environment for these properties.  As these properties are purchased, they are also typically financed to some degree with low interest rate debt that will have up to 10 year balloon payoff horizons.

Let’s now fast forward to the balloon payoff maturity dates.  In 10 years, I think it is reasonable to assume that interest rates may rise from 4.5% to 6%.  That is still a low rate.  However it is a 33% increase.  If cap rates increase by 33% as well, this will have a huge negative impact on property values.  In order to keep pace, net rents and income would need to increase by 33% in order to just maintain net property values.  That is not going to happen without some serious inflation.  So, when the mortgage note balloons, cap rates will be higher, property values will be lower, and the cost of replacement capital will be more expensive with less replacement debt available due to the lower property values.  Viola!  Another real estate downturn for opportunity funds to swoop in to purchase properties that may have trouble recapitalizing their debt. 

The term buy low and sell high never loses its meaning.  In today’s low interest and cap rate environment, I am concerned that too much institutional money is buying real estate too high for their own long term good.  But, then again, maybe I am wrong.  After all, some people never stop rolling sevens, right?

Until next time…

 

Keep kicking the dirt!

The Convenient Amnesia Rule

The Convenient Amnesia Rule

 When constructing an amenity for active adult communities, the rule of thumb is 15 – 20 sf of space per home.  Learn this rule and commit it to memory.  You will be quizzed on it later. 

When buying a home, amenity collateral is typically crystal clear on the amenities that are to be included in the community.  There are colored renderings of elevations and floor plans as well as a list of club services.  Remember, this amenity is usually planned on the rule of 15 – 20 sf of space per home (a reminder before the quiz). 

This rule is meant to provide an appropriate level of activities at a development expense that will allow for competitively priced homes.  Remember this.  More cost equals more expensive homes.

I bring your attention to these items to deal with what I call the Convenient Amnesia Rule due to Density.  This rule states that homebuyers forget what they bought as the community begins to grow.  As the community grows, so too does activity at the club.  This often causes residents to say the club is too small and needs to be expanded.  The growth of the community has caused them to forget that they received exactly what they were promised.  However, crowded clubs are not bad things.  Would you rather have a club that is quiet and empty?  Hopefully, the club execution and management will be done so well that there is energy and excitement throughout the club all day long.  What those people who complain about the crowds often forget is that if the club was larger, it would have cost more money to build and this additional cost would have needed to be passed along into the price of their home, possibly making their home too expensive for them to afford.  Also, a larger club would have a larger operating budget, possibly increasing HOA fees to a level that buyers cannot afford. 

Ok.  Quiz time! 

Question 1:  An appropriately sized club will help allow homes to be sold at a reasonable price if the club size is : A) 10 sf per home B) 15 – 20 sf home, or C) why are you asking, I don’t know what sf is anyway.

Question 2:  If the club is oversized, your annual HOA fees may:  A) be paid by the builder, B) be too high for you to afford, or C) I don’t care since I will never live in an active adult community regardless of how nice it is.

I hope you did not need to look at the paper next to you.  If you answered anything other than B to both questions, we need to talk.

Until next time…

 

Keep kicking the dirt!

 

 

When is a production builder not a production builder? Never!

When is a production builder not a production builder?  Never!

I wish I was an expert in human nature.  I wish I knew how to read people, understand what makes them tick and what makes them think that a production builder can and should act like a custom builder.  People will sign a contract for a production home and then, all of a sudden, feel that the floor plan and options offered are nothing more than a starting point for whatever changes they feel should be made to the home.  Oh, these poor misguided individuals.  I wish I understood them better.

They see the word production builder, they hear the word production builder, but they do not understand the word production builder.  Yes, you have guessed it.  I am going to explain the word production in the definition of production builder.

For a production builder (PB for short) to obtain the best pricing from their subcontractors, they have to make it as simple for their trades as possible.  That means that the subs need to know in advance what plans they are building, what options are being offered,  approximately how many homes per year the builder plans to build and what is the approximate construction cycle time.  This way, they know how to properly price their work, they know what to look for on selection sheets and they can appropriately staff their job sites. 

PBs also strive to make the job site as manageable as possible for their field managers.  When managing between 15 and 20 homes at a time, the field managers want to know that they are working off of standard plans and option sheets so that they can direct their subcontractors appropriately to make sure that what has been bought is what is being built.

PBs further work to make sure that their Design and Purchasing Departments can be effective by controlling the structural and design options offered.  This allows Purchasing to appropriately price out options up front so that the Designers can effectively work with customers during their design selection meetings.

Let’s now evaluate what happens to this well-oiled machine when a customer requests special items and forgets that they are dealing with a Production versus a Custom Builder.  Purchasing will not have priced their requested custom options up front so that Design has no idea what these items will cost or whether or not they are even feasible from a construction standpoint.  Construction may not end up with the correct plans to work from, increasing the risk of field mistakes being made by the subcontractors and causing delays and errors in the delivery of the home to the customer.  And the fuming customer will not understand how the builder could have made such a mistake with their custom changes.  It is true.  No good deed goes unpunished.

So, the next time you don’t understand why your PB can’t move a window two feet, or change the shower head from one wall to the other, take a minute to reflect on the unseen machinations that make up the construction process.  The more pebbles you throw into the machinery, the greater the risk of that machinery grinding to a very messy and painful halt.  I won’t even begin to explain in this blog what this can do to the warranty process.

Until next time…

Keep kicking the dirt!

 

Carve up the turkey, not the turkey farmer

Carve up the turkey, not the turkey farmer

How often have you driven through a development and thought about the things you would have done differently.  Or wondered what a developer was thinking.  Well, let me speak for the voiceless, those developers that do not have the benefit of sitting with you while you drive through their community.  Let me be their champion!

Let’s pretend together for a moment.  Assume that your unknown eccentric uncle just left you 500 prime residential acres and tens of millions of dollars to develop it.  You jump for joy and can’t imagine your good fortune.  Now what?  There are some barren acres, some wooded acres, some lakes and some wildlife.  You have a blank canvass.  Are you going to paint a masterpiece or are you going to finger paint?

It is a very complicated and involved process to develop land.  You want the development to be aesthetically pleasing and blend into the larger town and community.  You want tree lined streets, lakes, parks, good architecture, strong signage and landscaping.  You also want to make sure that the local government is on board with your vision and will approve your plans.  You need builders that will buy into your architectural guidelines and want to build in your community.  And, most of all, you actually want to make a profit doing it and not squander away all of your dearly departed uncle’s money.

Consider it like going to the grocery store to plan a large dinner with no idea how many people are coming or what they are willing to eat.  You also don’t know if you have enough money to buy all the food, you are not yet sure if you have enough kitchen space to prepare the meal and you wonder if your dining room will have enough seats for all of your guests.  Then, by the time the big evening comes, you have ended up making a fantastic meal with superb appetizers, main course and dessert.  You have also decorated your house to fit the theme of the dinner and paid particular attention to where everyone sits to maximize conversation.  Then, as you are basking in the glory of your accomplishment, you overhear conversation from some of your guests as to how they would have done things differently.

Before you run back to the kitchen for the butcher’s knife to feed those guests their own fingers, think back to the efforts of the developer that built the fabulous community where your home is located.  You now have some common stories to share with each other.  And, please, put the knives back in the drawer.

Until next time…

 

Keep kicking the dirt!