Issue Analysis for asset managers is probably my favorite topic of this series of four. It’s the last series, but it’s really the main heart of it about what we do as asset managers when we’re wearing that hat in order to make those best decisions. Not only taking in those different issues that come up from the other analysis, like the analysis that we did in part one of the series, the video on property analysis, or part two about financial analysis, or part three, on market analysis. Now we take all that data in, and we apply it to the issues at hand, in order to prioritize what projects we’re going to do in order to make sure that our budget is being allocated properly. Again, so that we can be more successful in our syndication in our investment fund, so that our investors are happier and better treated and get better results, which is at the end of the day, the benchmark for our success. So I know you’re going to find this video helpful.
We’re talking about operations and custody. And in this video, we’re going through Issue Analysis. The point of Issue Analysis is, at the end, when you’re doing your property management plan or your custody plan, what we’re trying to do is come up with a list of all of the issues that are out there, develop a plan of what the priorities are, and determine if there are things we want to take care of sooner rather than later. Now, this obviously is an evolving thing as well, it’s just like the rest of our plan. And so what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to set down something in stone that says this is where we’re at today, this is what we’re seeing. So you can make plans for the future about what you’re going to tackle next. And then you also have the ability to measure how good you were at estimating the improvements that you made.
So after you’ve gone through your Property Assessment and your financial assessment, that’s probably the right time, maybe the market assessment as well, that’s probably the right time to start doing the initial issue analysis, or the whole custody plan. Basically, what we’re doing here is we’re developing an action plan.
The best way to do this, I have found, is to again, use a table. Now the table I would start with is I would basically start ranking everything in priority. So you’ll probably do this in Excel or some spreadsheet. I would talk about the priority of them, I would then define what the issue is. And I would not include solutions in the definition of that issue, I would just talk about the issue itself, the air conditioning system is breaking every once a month, every 12 months or whatever.
I would then go through the cost that I think it would cost in order to that I’m having as a result of this problem. So if it’s air conditioner, a track system, it may be that my cost is I need to pay a service or service contract is going up or whatever is useful. And then I have the why. Now, it may seem self-evident as why this is an issue. But it’s still useful to put down on paper why this is an issue. That way you have a solid plan and you have something to really make sure that you’re checking your priorities against. You may find something may seem like very high priority. But if when you get to your why you realize it’s not, or you may have something that you thought was a very low priority, but because of its impact, it is actually a very high priority and you want to change it.
Then we talk about the as-is versus alternatives. Here I want to just quickly define what the situation would look like now versus what the different alternatives that I have are. And we’re going to talk more about fleshing out those alternatives in a minute. But I still wanted to make some sort of reference to it here. I want to know what improvement costs there are going to be.
Typically, these cost money. If they don’t cost money, then great, then it seems like it might be something simple to do with it unless it takes too much of your time. And then what is the source of the funds? Is it your reserves? Is it the tenants paying? Where what is the source of that?
So what you’ll do is you’ll take your spreadsheet like this, and you’ll just go down the list. You could have each fact we discussed, maybe there is the parking lot, we’ll need new striping. Up, look what I said, I just told you don’t put solutions in here I went and put a solution. Parking lot, parking lines fading. And there’s a good reason why we also don’t put our alternatives in here, because it may be the restriping. But maybe what you really identify is, as you’re writing or why it may say something like the parking lot lines are fading, making it difficult for people to know where to park, we’ve always had a problem parking this anyway. And as you write this, you’re starting to realize that maybe you need to revisit your parking plan as well. And so you may want to change your parking plan, etc. So you put those all down.
So now you’ve got a list of actions and you’ve got them prioritized in terms of where you want to take them and what the source is. Now for the alternatives. Your alternatives plan.
Here’s what I would want to know. I would want to know what is your pro forma today, so before you did this action, what is your pro forma? I want to know if there is any change in your escalations percentage. I want to know what effect that has on NOI. And what that dollar amount is? Because ultimately, what I’m trying to find out is I want to know, certainly the cost, how much is this going to cost? But I want to know what the existing unit, let’s say it’s an HVAC unit, what’s the existing value? So what I’m trying to find is, am I really adding value with this alternative or not? And then I want to know, do I have any if there’s debt on that piece of equipment or whatever? Is there any equity in it?
And then I want to know, ultimately for the entire property. I want to know what my estimate is for my going in. So before I do this cap rate versus going out. I ultimately want to know what that change is going to be am I adding value to the property above on the NOI line, which we’re talking about here? Or am I adding value in how it’s positioned in the market so that it is a better property and it appreciates more? I want to know that sort of thing. And if the answer is zero, it’s fine that it’s zero. If it’s negative, it’s fine that it’s negative. The important thing is that you’re documenting what these things are. So when you make a decision, you’ve got a track record of that you can point to and say, “Okay, those were the decisions we made, what was good and what was bad.”
And ultimately, for each alternative, we’re going to do, and I’m assuming that there are different alternatives. So for each we calculate the cash on cash effect. Or you could do the ROI that you’re estimating, I want to know what the value enhancement is. If this is making a change to the cap rate, down here, if it’s making a change to that cap rate, it’s going to have an effect on your overall value. And I want to know what that is. And I want to know that in dollars, and then I want to know what the net present value is. And I want to know if there’s, what the IRR is.
So I want to know the net present value. So I can determine whether this is a change that’s going to really put money in the pockets of my investors or negatively. I want to know what that dollar amount is, because that will set a budget price for me. And it will help me determine that well, I’m trying to get my investors a 10% return, I use that in my net present value calculation. And if I’m seeing that I’ve got a negative number there that I’m getting a negative net present value, maybe that’s something I want to take a look at. And then after we’ve done that present value, so certainly it changes dollars amount, but I want some more of a quantitative idea as well about, just what percentage wise what effect that has over the term. So what’s the IRR of it?
So I hope that helps. This is how we make smart decisions about how we address each action that we decide to make when we’re doing the custody portion of our operations. So that we make good decisions that are bounded in rationality and that are very logical. And then at the end of the day, you can walk your investors through this and you’ve got a really solid case for really everything you’ve done. There’s no second guessing there’s no questioning. It’s either you’re adding value or you’re not. And that’s really what your investors care about. This is Tilden Moschetti at Moschetti Syndication Founders Club and we’ll see you in the next video.
This is the last of this four part series of videos on asset management. It was put together a little while ago for some high top level real estate professionals, not only the very best brokers but also people from investment funds from REITs who wanted to take off the hat of working for somebody and start doing syndications or putting together an investment fund for themselves. My name is Tilden Moschetti. I am a syndication attorney for the Moschetti Syndication Law Group. Now if we can help you be successful, give us a call today. Not only can we help you with the legal side of things, making sure that you’re in compliance with the SEC rules and with state regulators, but also applying our business expertise and having done this many many times for ourselves as well as our clients. Again, please don’t hesitate to give us a call.