“Why should I invest in Commercial Real Estate?,” someone recently asked me. With the well-publicized drop in residential prices in some areas of the country, it might seem prudent to be avoiding real estate right now. But commercial real estate is a different animal altogether: First, commercial real estate is strictly property for businesses, i.e., retail centers, office buildings, warehouses, manufacturing sites, apartments, and land. Second, there is less of it than homes. Third, commercial real estate is either for the use of a business or for producing an investment return, as opposed to a house you and your family may live in. So, why invest in this area? Some of the great fortunes in the U.S. have been based on real estate. Investing in the stock market, where you can see the hour-by-hour and day-by-day gyrations of your portfolio can be stomach wrenching. Real estate trades hands infrequently, so the valuations are less subject to daily events and more governed by yearly trends of supply and demand. Putting a 5% to 15% portion of your investment portfolio in property is a very prudent thing to do. This will help stabilize your overall returns and real estate may often move in the opposite direction of the stock market. For instance, commercial real estate, as measured by the index of equity real estate investment trusts over the past 10 years, returned a total of 12.4% versus the SP-500 returns of just under 10%. Income: Commercial investment properties will be leased to tenants, like businesses, and retail stores. These leases produce rental income for the owner which should create positive cash flow after the mortgage and expenses are paid. This may produce an income of 5% to 10% per year of the amount you invested. Depreciation: Also called cost recovery, this tax write-off shelters some or all of your income from the expense of taxes. You write off the cost of the building and some of the building components, but not the land it sits on. Equity build up: Because you can use your rental income produced by your tenants to pay your mortgage, then the part of your mortgage that is principal – but not interest expense – reduces the amount of your loan and thus builds up your equity in the property.
Appreciation: The property becomes worth more money 1) as the rent income goes up, 2) as the market puts a higher value on the rents and 3) as the land value goes up. Additionally, the value usually goes up somewhat in proportion to inflation so that property is a good hedge against inflation.
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Tags: Commercial, Real Estate
