Financing
Paying off the mortgage early, or not
A question with a clear mathematical answer and a legitimate non-mathematical one, and the two frequently disagree.
Topic
risk
Every Real Estate Investing Trends article tagged risk — 8 pieces across 3 sections.
Underwriting
Portfolio-level underwriting: the risks you cannot see one deal at a time
Every property can pass its own stress test while the portfolio fails, because the same shock hits all of them at once.
Markets & Cycles
Insurance costs are now a market variable
Premiums used to be a rounding error in underwriting. In several regions they have become a determinant of whether property is viable at all.
Financing
Bridge loans and the exit that has to exist
Short-term debt solves a timing problem and creates a deadline, and the deadline does not care whether your plan worked.
Markets & Cycles
Class A, B and C, and why the letters matter
The classification is informal and imprecise, and it predicts more about your experience as an owner than almost any other single descriptor.
Underwriting
Stress testing a deal before you sign
The base case tells you what the deal does if you are right. The stress case tells you what happens when you are not, which is the more common condition.
Financing
How much should you put down?
The maximum leverage available is rarely the right amount, and the arithmetic that argues otherwise assumes nothing goes wrong.
Underwriting
DSCR: the number your lender cares about most
Debt service coverage ratio decides whether a loan gets made, at what size, and how much room you have before the deal is in trouble.