Welcome to the real estate blog of Westside Realty Advisors. The mission of this blog is to provide meaningful and useful information on the real estate and financial markets. It is our intent to keep you informed about what is going on in the commercial real estate market.
Corporate borrowers face a challenging situation as their debt matures during an unfavorable time in the capital markets. Factors such as inflation, GDP growth expectations, and the Federal Reserve’s actions have reduced available leverage and increased borrowing costs. Moreover, corporate lenders have become more discerning, imposing restrictive covenants on borrowers. As a result, many chief financial officers of operating companies are seeking alternative sources of capital. One increasingly popular option to bridge the capital structure gaps is the utilization of sale-leasebacks.
The difficulties impacting the capital markets, such as high-interest rates, costly borrowing, and greater amortization, also affect commercial real estate. However, sale-leasebacks offer attractive rates and enable sellers to receive full proceeds. According to Gordon Whiting, the managing director and head of net lease real estate at Angelo Gordon, it is an opportune time for companies to explore sale-leasebacks. Whiting highlighted two key considerations when evaluating sale-leasebacks in the current market.
A Solution for a Challenging Market
The Federal Reserve’s pursuit of higher interest rates can severely impact a company’s cash flow. Furthermore, the overall economic conditions are straining businesses precisely when securing financing for operational improvements or capital expansions has become more difficult.
“Sale-leasebacks are gaining interest because the cost of financing for companies has risen,” explained Whiting. In a sale-leaseback arrangement, a company that owns property sells the building to an investor who then leases the property back to the company on a long-term basis, typically spanning 20 years or more.
This strategy combines elements of a real property sale with a corporate financing arrangement but is executed at cap rates lower than corporate lending rates. By unlocking property assets on their balance sheet, companies can generate cash to invest in their business for various purposes, such as developing new products, expanding operations, or implementing growth initiatives to increase revenue and profits. Since these arrangements are long-term, companies retain access to their critical facilities. Additionally, lease payments are considered operating expenses, providing lessees with tax advantages.
“Sale-leasebacks can be an excellent tool for CFOs to raise capital,” emphasized Whiting.
The Time is Ripe for Sellers
Various industries increasingly utilize sale-leasebacks, including retail, manufacturing, cold storage, distribution, and medical offices. Whiting advises any company considering a sale-leaseback to be aware that time may be of the essence in the current environment.
“Sellers are realizing that the value of their real estate may be higher today than in the future,” Whiting stated. “Moreover, sellers are facing economic uncertainty and the prospect of higher interest rates in the coming years, making capital more expensive.”
On a positive note, buyers and sellers are eager to finalize deals swiftly. To enhance the chances of a successful transaction, Whiting suggests assessing the entire real estate portfolio to identify multiple properties suitable for sale-leasebacks. “Having multiple properties generally leads to better pricing and increased interest from buyers,” he added, resulting in a larger payout for the seller.
Westside Realty Advisors has recently concluded several sale-leasebacks, providing capital to corporate property owners.
If you want to learn more about sale-leasebacks and how we can help provide capital to pay off debt or utilize in your business, please contact Gary Aminoff at (310) 432-6464 or gaminoff@kwcommercial.com.
By Jack Witthaus
CoStar News
This article appeared today in CoStar News. If you are a landlord in Los Angeles, you are not looked on favorably, even though you pay a lot of property tax on your holdings. You are vastly outnumbered by renters, and numbers are what counts for politicians who will favor renters over property owners. This eviction moratorium devastates landlords who have tenants not paying rent because they can’t be evicted. Most rental properties in Los Angeles have small mom-and-pop owners who can’t continue to have non-paying tenants. Does LA County or City care? Nope. Renters have more votes, and that is who they will favor. GA
Apartment tenants may see more protections in Los Angeles city and county after rule changes in recent weeks.
Los Angeles County’s board of supervisors has extended a moratorium on apartment evictions through the end of March after the ban was set to expire in January, according to the county’s website. The ban applies to renters in unincorporated Los Angeles County and to cities in the county that don’t have a moratorium in place.
The Los Angeles area is the last major U.S. market to have an apartment moratorium in place after these types of bans were enacted under emergency measures to protect jobless renters when the pandemic struck in March 2020.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles City Council has passed or is mulling new protections for apartment renters. Some of the new rules include prohibiting landlords from evicting tenants without “just cause” and requiring landlords to pay relocation fees if rents are raised above a certain threshold. Another rule prohibits landlords from evicting tenants that fall behind on rent as long as it’s no more than one month of fair market rent.
Landlords oppose several of the changes. The California Apartment Association, an industry group based in Sacramento, said in a letter to the city of Los Angeles that it opposed landlords being required to pay relocation fees if rent is increased above a certain threshold. The organization also opposes a measure barring a landlord from serving a notice to pay rent or quit the apartment until a tenant owes an amount that exceeds one month of fair market rent for an equivalently sized unit. The association said in the letter it may sue the city, and said that the group has filed lawsuits in the city of Pasadena and San Francisco over the same or similar policies.
“In addition to being bad policy, these proposals are also preempted by state law,” according to the letter.
The changes come as the Biden administration aims to pass a national bill of rights for renters. The bill may create rights concerning evictions, tenant organization and lease clarity.
The greater Los Angeles area has the 19th-highest average multifamily market rent in the U.S. of $2,193 per month, according to CoStar data. The average asking rent for an apartment unit nationwide is $1,631. Eleven of the top 20 markets in the U.S. in terms of apartment rent are located in California.
Without the elevator…there could be no downtown skyscrapers or residential high-rises, and city life as we know it would be impossible…the elevator’s role in American history has been no less profound or transformative than that of the automobile…“If we didn’t have elevators…we would have a megalopolis, one continuous city, stretching from Philadelphia to Boston, because everything would be five or six stories tall.” Boston Globe, 2 March 2014
Continue reading “Death of the Elevator”
The rent is due today.
For the tenants and property owners tied to trillions of dollars of commercial real estate properties in the U.S., what happens on April 1 is no joke this year.
Retailers have been closed or their businesses are deeply battered. Companies across sectors have been forced to carry out layoffs or furlough staff, while others have been directly impacted by a virus that has afflicted more than 170,000 Americans to date.
Millions of Americans are already jobless, worried about paying the rent today. And the virus is weeks away from its peak, health experts warn.
Continue reading “‘There’s No Bailout For Landlords’: What To Expect As Anxious April Begins”
John Egan | Jan 18, 2019
We’re barely into 2019, and the shaky future of Sears continues to grab many of the big headlines in the retail sector. But that’s not the story that high-net-worth (HNW) investors should be following in terms of retail real estate.
Rather, experts advise, HNW investors should be evaluating retail prospects based on geography and strategy—not on Sears-level machinations in the retail sector.
Continue reading “CAN INVESTORS STILL PROFIT BY INVESTING IN RETAIL REAL ESTATE?”
JANUARY 08, 2019 STEVEN SHARP
The Westside Pavilion shopping mall has yet to complete its highly-anticipated transformation into office space, but its developers have already secured a tenant for the property.
Hudson Pacific Properties and Macerich announced today that Google, Inc. has leased the entirety of the 584,000-square-foot office campus, which is to be called One Westside. The 14-year lease is to commence upon the completion of construction and tenant improvement in 2022.
Continue reading “GOOGLE TO LEASE WESTSIDE PAVILION REDEVELOPMENT”
By Patrick Sisson Updated Dec 26, 2018, 11:23am EST
It’s complicated. In the course of compiling its annual Emerging Trends report, the Urban Land Institute found that the only certainty in its outlook for 2019 was uncertainty. Expert analysis points to a more complex, multi-layered series of overlapping trends, with unpredictable results, as opposed to a few strong narratives.
Continue reading “The 10 top emerging trends that will shape real estate in 2019”
Tanvi Misra December 20, 2018 This post originally appeared on CityLab
It has become an increasingly common story: A dollar store opens up in an economically depressed area with scarce healthy and affordable food options, sometimes with the help of local tax incentives. It advertises hard-to-beat low prices but it offers little in terms of fresh produce and nutritious items—further trapping residents in a cycle of poverty and ill-health.
Continue reading “THE DOLLAR STORE BACKLASH HAS BEGUN”
JULY 18, 2018|
Wanda Group Seeks to Sell 9900 Wilshire in a Top U.S. Hotel Market Amid Competing DevelopmentWhen Dalian Wanda Group Co. Ltd. bought an eight-acre property on a prime stretch of Beverly Hills’ Wilshire Boulevard, the Chinese commercial real estate and cinema conglomerate envisioned building a $1.2 billion, 5-Star hotel and condominium development that was ambitiously upscale, even by Beverly Hills standards.
But four years later, the site at 9900 Wilshire Blvd. remains a dirt hole between the Los Angeles Country Club and the iconic Beverly Hilton hotel in one of the country’s top hotel markets.
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