Tag Archives: utilities

Valuing Rental Property

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Money quoted me in Here’s How Much You Should Pay for a Rental Property. It opens,

Q: I want to invest in a rental property. Is there a formula I can use to determine the value of a building based on the rent it takes in?

A: One useful calculation to use is the capitalization (or “cap”) rate, which is the ratio of net rental income to the purchase price of the property, says Brooklyn Law School professor David Reiss.

Start with your gross rental income, which is simply the total of one year’s worth of rents for all of the units combined. Subtract 5% or so to account for occasional vacancies throughout the year. It’s safest to use existing rents, but you can conservatively increase the amounts if you are planning to improve the units and raise rents.

Then add up the yearly operating expenses — property taxes, insurance, utilities, plus at least 5% of gross income for a maintenance/repair fund — and subtract that from the annual income. To get your cap rate, divide that number (the net operating income) by the purchase rate.

Run the Numbers

Let’s say you’re buying a five-family house and anticipate gross annual income of $100,000. If you calculate your total annual operating expenses at $30,000, you end up with $70,000 in net operating income. For a property that cost, let’s say, $1 million, that equates to a 7% cap rate.

But is 7% a worthwhile return on your investment for the work and risk of being a property owner and a landlord?

“That depends on the building,” says Reiss. “For a brand new, fully rented, high-quality building in a prime neighborhood, a reliable, low-risk 4% to 10% return might be reasonable.

“But if you’re talking about a rundown building, in an borderline neighborhood, with a several vacant units that you’re planning to fill after you undertake major improvements, you might reasonably hold out for a 20% cap rate,” he explains, because you’ll have renovation costs on the expense side, perhaps a higher vacancy rate while you fix it up — and you’re taking a bigger risk with your money.

Using a Mortgage

Also, the cap rate assumes a cash purchase. When you take a mortgage to buy an investment property, lenders will likely demand a down payment of 25% or more, says Reiss.

So in that case, he suggests also calculating your return on upfront costs.

In our example, if you invest $300,000 in upfront costs (down payment plus other initial expenses like closing costs and renovations) and expect to earn $20,000 a year (after $50,000 annual mortgage payments), that’s just under a 7% annual return on your money.

Again, you need to consider the relative risk of the particular investment property to determine whether that payback rate is high enough. Look at several properties to get a better feel for how the risks and rewards compare.

Seniors Selling Their Homes

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AARP Magazine quoted me in Selling Your Home. It reads, in part,

Judy and Joe Powell recently faced a decision most of us will eventually have to make: Should we sell our home and downsize to save money and effort, or hang on to the homestead because it’s familiar and full of fond memories?

After mulling the choice for a couple of years, the Texas couple decided to sell their 20-acre cattle ranch to move to a nearby college town.

“We are the sole caretakers of this property. It’s 24/7,” says Judy, 69, who mows the pastures with a John Deere tractor while her husband, 71, tends the cattle. “Basically, we don’t want to have to work this hard. We want time to play.”

The Powells now have their sights set on a single-story house in nearby College Station, where, for a monthly fee, someone else will maintain the yard. What’s more, they will be 30 minutes to an hour closer to their friends and doctors. The savings on gas alone will be more than a thousand dollars a year, Judy says.

Most of us aren’t dealing with the rigors of running a ranch. But, like the Powells, many of us will discover at some point that our homes, though we love them, no longer suit our lifestyles, or that they are becoming labor-intensive money pits.

A recent Merrill Lynch survey of people’s home choices in retirement found that a little more than half downsized and, like the Powells, were motivated by the reduction in monthly living costs and by shedding the burden of maintaining a larger home and property. Still, moving is not a decision easily made.

“The tie to one’s home is the hardest thing to understand from the outside. It’s a very personal decision,” says Rodney Harrell, a housing expert with the AARP Public Policy Institute.

Some people may be reluctant to move from a house where they raised children and created decades of memories, he says. On the other hand, the cul-de-sac that provided a safe place for kids may be isolating if driving becomes a challenge.

A good way to begin the process of figuring out what’s best for you is to “recognize the trade-offs,” Harrell says. First, consider the house itself. Is it suitable for your needs, and will it allow you to age in place? Most homes can be easily modified to address safety and access issues, but location is also critical.

“How close are health facilities?” asks Geoff Sanzenbacher, a research economist with the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. “Are things nearby, or do you have to drive?”

Even if your current home meets these age-friendly criteria, you need to consider whether it is eating up money that could be spent in better ways to meet your changing needs.

For example, the financial cushion provided by not having a mortgage can be quickly erased by rising utility costs, property taxes and homeowner’s insurance. There is also the looming uncertainty of major repairs, which can cost thousands of dollars, such as a new roof and gutters, furnace or central air conditioner. A useful budgeting guide is to avoid spending more than 30 percent of your gross income on housing costs, says David Reiss, a professor at Brooklyn Law School who specializes in real estate finance.

“This isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, but it does give a sense of how much money you need for other necessities of life, such as food, clothing and medical care, as well as for the aspects of life that give it pleasure and meaning — entertainment, travel and hobbies,” Reiss says.

So if your housing expenses are higher than a third of your income or you’re pouring your retirement income into your house with little money left to enjoy life, consider selling and moving to a smaller, less costly place.

Just as important, once you’ve made the decision, don’t dawdle, Sanzenbacher says. The quicker you move, the faster you can invest the proceeds of the sale and start saving money on maintenance, insurance and taxes.

Take this example from BC’s Center for Retirement Research: A homeowner sells her $250,000 house and buys a smaller one for $150,000. Annual expenses, such as utilities, taxes and insurance, typically amount to 3.25 percent of a home’s value, so the move to the smaller home saves $3,250 a year right off the bat.

Moving and other associated costs would eat up an estimated $25,000 of profit from the sale, leaving $75,000 to be invested and tapped for income each year.

If all of this sounds good, your next decision is where to move. Your new location depends on any number of personal factors: climate; proximity to family and friends; preference for an urban, suburban or rural setting; tax rates; and access to medical care, among other considerations.

“You want to take an inventory of your desires and start to think, ‘Do I have the resources to make that happen?’ ” Reiss says.

Affordable Housing for which Low-Income Households?

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The National Low Income Housing Coalition’s latest issue of Housing Spotlight provides its annual examination of “the availability of rental housing affordable to” extremely low income “and low income renter households . . ..” (1) It finds that

the gap between the number of ELI households and the number of rental homes that are both affordable and available to them has grown dramatically since the foreclosure crisis and recession. Despite this growing need, most new rental units being built are only affordable to households with incomes above 50% of AMI. At the same time, the existing stock of federally subsidized housing is shrinking through demolition and contract expirations, and waiting lists for housing assistance remain years long in many communities. Federal housing assistance is so limited that just one out of every four eligible households receives it. (1, emphasis in the original)
The article, “Affordable Housing is Nowhere to be Found for Millions,” describes the role of the National Housing Trust Fund, signed into law by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, but only recently funded by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:
The NHTF is structured as a block grant to states, and at least 90% of all funding will be used to produce, preserve, rehabilitate and operate rental housing. Further, 75% of rental housing funding must benefit ELI. The funding of the NHTF will make a difference in the lives of many ELI renters by supporting the development and preservation of housing affordable to this income group. However, additional funding to the NHTF will be necessary to assure support to all income eligible households in need of housing. (1, footnote omitted)
The NLIHC’s key findings from this work include,
  • The number of ELI renter households rose from 9.6 million in 2009 to 10.3 million in 2013 and they made up 24% of all renter households in 2013.
  • There was a shortage of 7.1 million affordable rental units available to ELI renter households in 2013. Another way to express this gap is that there were just 31 affordable and available units per 100 ELI renter households. The data show no change from the analysis a year ago.
  • For the 4.1 million renter households DLI renter households in 2013, there was a shortage of 3.4 million affordable rental units available to them. There were just 17 affordable and available units per 100 DLI renter households.
  • Seventy-five percent of ELI renter households spent more than half of their income on rent and utilities; 90% of DLI renter households spent more than half of their income for rent and utilities.
  • In every state, at least 60% of ELI renters paid more than half of their income on rent and utilities. (1)

Given that housing affordability remained a problem during both boom times and bust and given that we should not expect another dramatic expansion of federal subsidies for rental housing, now might be a good time to ask what we can reasonably expect from the Housing Trust Fund. Should it be spread wide and thin, helping many a bit, or narrow and deep, helping a few a lot? No right answers here.

Nation of Renters

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NYU’s Furman Center and Capital One have produced an interesting graphic, Renting in America’s Largest Cities. The graphic highlights the growing trend of renting in urban communities, but also the increasing expense of doing so. The press release about this study provides some highlights:

  • In 2006, the majority of the population in just five of the largest 11 U.S. cities lived in rental housing; in 2013, that number increased to nine.
  • As demand for rental housing grew faster than available supply, rental vacancy rates declined in all but two of the 11 cities, making it harder to find units for rent.
  • Rents outpaced inflation in almost all of the 11 cities. Rents Increased most in DC, with a 21 percent increase in inflation-adjusted median gross rent, and least in Houston, where rents were stable.
  • In all 11 cities, an overwhelming majority of low-income renters were severely rent-burdened, facing rents and utility costs equal to at least half of their income.
  • Even In the most affordable cities in the study, low-income renters could afford no more than 11 percent of recently available units.
  • In five major cities, including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston and Miami, moderate-Income renters could afford less than a third of recently available units in 2013.

Rental housing clearly has an important role to play in providing stable homes for American households, particularly in big cities. While rental housing has been the stepchild of federal housing policy for far too long, it is good that it is finally get some attention and resources.

I look forward to the Furman Center’s follow-up report, which will provide more detail than the graphic does. I am particularly curious about whether the researchers have addressed the difference between housing affordability and location affordability in the longer study. I would guess that the relative affordability of the cities in this study is greatly impacted by households’ transportation costs.

Affordable Housing Preservation in NYC

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Leaders of Brooklyn Legal Services Corporation A have released a white paper, Mayor de Blasio’s Housing Plan:  The Most Important Housing Plan in NYC History? Just to get the suspense out of the way, they pretty much feel that it is. But they do push the Mayor to pay more attention to the preservation aspect of his Housing Plan. They write,

Based upon our experience, representing the low-income tenants we serve, we have observed that rent decontrol is often brought about by predatory actions from landlords to push protected tenants out of their apartments in order to reach decontrol status. In 2013, over 30,000 New York City families were displaced from their homes. Without access to free legal services, many of these families had to represent themselves in Housing Court and were unable to fight the predatory and often illegal actions that made them lose their homes. The most recent reports from the Task Force to Expand Access to Civil Legal Services commissioned by the Chief Judge of the State of New York stated that 99% of tenants are unrepresented in eviction cases in New York City. The need for legal services is very real, and without increasing the very limited resources available for such services the fight for preserving affordable housing will almost certainly not be successful.

Brooklyn A’s attorneys are constantly witnessing how this perfect storm of rising housing values and limited supply of affordable housing can impact low-income communities. In many neighborhoods landlords are more incentivized than ever to try and push out rent protected tenants by any means necessary, so that they can void the rent protections and bring in new tenants willing to pay the inflated market price. We are currently representing tenants from a building whose main waterline, boiler and gas meters were destroyed in the middle of the night, only a short time after the tenants refused offers by their landlords to get bought out of their apartments. In another recent case the landlord shut off all heat, hot water, and sewage in the building to provoke a vacate order to force the rent-stabilized tenants out. The tenants had to live in emergency Red Cross shelters for a period of time because they lost their home; including one who had lived at the building for thirty years. Unfortunately, these are just a couple of examples of increasingly common practices by landlords to violate and then deregulate those apartments. (2, footnotes omitted)

During earlier run ups in real estate prices, landlords seeking to make a quick profit were known to send in thugs with baseball bats and pit bulls to frighten tenants, particularly elderly tenants, so that they would move and make the apartments available for tenants who would paid higher rents. The predatory equity that has been documented in NYC in the last decade has used less obviously threatening behaviors such as “repairs” that lead to long term loss of utilities and frivolous filings in housing court. But the goal is the same — get rid of tenants paying low rent-regulated rents.  Brooklyn Legal Services Corporation A is right to focus on the role that legal services attorneys can play in protecting existing affordable housing in a cost-effective way.