Je continue mon tour d’horizon sur l’immobilier avec le résumé de Investing in Real Estate Private Equity: An Insider’s Guide to Real Estate Partnerships, Funds, Joint Ventures & Crowdfunding. Si les autres articles de blog portaient principalement sur le métier de promoteur immobilier, nous changeons là de perspective : l’auteur est un investisseur spécialiste de l’immobilier, pas un promoteur. Ainsi les conseils qu’il donne sont directement utiles pour nos investisseurs. Ils sont classés en 2 paragraphes. Le premier rappelle uniquement un principe déjà abordé dans nos précédentes lectures : la nécessité de la spécialisation en immobilier. Le second, plus conséquent, récapitule les conseils de bon sens que cet investisseur chevronné transmet.

Note : je ne traduis pas les citations originales, pour cela Google Translate fait un excellent travail.

Spécialisation

Regardless of what many scam artists will have you believe, real estate is a complicated and nuanced business that takes years of experience and painful lessons learned before you begin to not suck.

You might spend a lifetime pursuing mastery of a single asset class, let alone the entire industry. Being 95% expert is not enough. Little oversights can cost big money.

Vous lisez ci-dessus ce qu’on pourrait résumer par « If you fail to specialize, your specialty will be failure » que l’on retrouvait dans un précédent article de blog. C’est la base du métier dans l’immobilier : notre métier met en jeu tellement d’intermédiaires et de compétences différentes, pour des sommes souvent conséquentes, dans des projets qui ne sont finalement chacun que des prototypes, que si vous n’êtes pas expert vous courez le risque de cumuler les erreurs. C’est pour cette raison que Lymo a depuis le début décidé de se concentrer sur des opérations de mini-résidences.

Stratégie d’investissement

The major categories of food groups are office, retail, industrial, and multifamily.  Each major category has sub-specialties, such as medical office, strip retail, big-box retail, regional malls, flex industrial, distribution, affordable housing, and senior housing.  Other product types don’t fit cleanly within these categories and are considered specialty asset classes like golf courses or marinas. Each product type has unique issues to consider and requires expertise, so owner/operators tend to specialize in one (sometimes more) product type, requiring investors to either partner with multiple operators or invest in a fund who handles this allocation on their behalf.

L’auteur détaille ici les différentes catégories d’immobilier : bureau, commerce, industriel et logement.

Mixed-use multifamily properties usually have a retail component at street level with units on upper floors.  Mixed use is encouraged by cities who like the idea of promoting walkable neighborhoods, but many recently developed properties have struggled to lease their retail space.  These spaces are often not suitable for major national tenants due to their location or size, so they can be tough to keep leased at attractive rates.

Il est vrai que les mairies demandent souvent à ce que le promoteur fasse des commerces en pied d’immeuble, ce qui peut poser un problème pour le promoteur, notamment dans le cas d’un quartier nouveau et/ou avec peu de passage.

Keep it simple and look for good real estate and managers that add real value rather than creating it artificially, and temporarily, through complicated capital structures.

En d’autres termes, la valeur doit être dégagée avant tout par l’opération immobilière, pas les considérations juridiques associées.

Investors are well served by setting aside pro forma returns and development budgets to focus on the people driving the business.  If I had the choice between evaluating only the manager or the real estate before making an investment, I would choose the manager every time.

L’immobilier demande effectivement beaucoup de connaissances diverses qu’il est rare de trouver dans des livres. L’expérience est importante en immobilier.

Assessing managers is a messy and imprecise process, sort of like interviewing potential employees.  The best way to get a sense of the performance and character of a manager is to have long term experience with them, through good times and bad.  This is why referrals to managers through trusted friends or advisers are extremely valuable.

Don’t be afraid to set up a meeting in person to talk through the company’s investment strategy and infrastructure. Ideally, meet at the company’s offices so you can see the operation in person and get a better sense of the scale and scope of the group.

Look for consistency of product type, market, and investment strategy across the history of the manager, and make sure they have sufficient experience relevant to the deal you are considering.

Dans les trois dernières citations, l’auteur donne des astuces pour estimer la qualité d’un professionnel de l’immobilier.

If a company doesn’t have a 30 year track record, don’t dismiss them immediately.  At least hear the pitch.  Great new companies are formed all the time, and truly creative and differentiated strategies can be hard to execute in the confines of an existing successful company.

Là encore, cette phrase est très vrai : ce n’est pas parce que la société est jeune ou de taille réduite qu’elle ne peut pas proposer de stratégie d’investissement pertinente.

Because of the complicated set of incentives typical to real estate transactions, which are discussed more in the “Compensation & Fees” chapter, it is nearly impossible to avoid conflicts of interest between managers and investors.

Nous faisons tout chez Lymo pour aligner les intérêts entre investisseurs et plateforme, et nous détaillons comment dans notre FAQ. Mais en tant qu’investisseur, nous conseillons de systématiquement essayer de comprendre comment se rémunère l’intermédiaire, c’est toujours très instructif.

Investors like to believe that they can quantify investment risks.  (Where does this sit on the efficient frontier?  What is the correlation to my equity portfolio?  What is the standard deviation of five year returns?)  Frustratingly, private real estate investments resist quantification and are inseparable from the people who manage them.

The unfortunate reality is that life is uncertain.  Believing too much in any forecast is a recipe for disaster.

Ces 2 dernières citations expliquent ce qui fait l’intérêt de notre métier : il est plein de surprises et difficilement modélisable.

Based on my conversations with private investors, allocations to the space [of real estate] are commonly in the 0% to 25% range. Industry insiders tend to have a much higher allocation of their net worth in real estate, but they often don’t have a choice (in order to meet co-invest requirements) and are forced to tolerate more risk and volatility than your average investor

Boom times are recognizable by the lavish parties thrown by brokers and great investment opportunities are usually easy to find when financing and equity raising is impossible.

For a good indicator of the state of the market, look to the real estate industrial complex – the army of real estate industry players (lenders, attorneys, architects, service providers, consultants, etc.) who make money from transactions but have little personal cash at stake in investments.  This REIC helps provide momentum to the market and its size is inversely related to the quality of investments available.  When industry conference attendance is at all-time highs, I’d recommend being judicious about the type of investments you make.