S.E.C. Real Estate Observer

History of the Eden Family Ernie’s Mom was an immigrant who escaped from Berlin prior to World War II. She escaped with her parents and three siblings. Ernie’s Grandfather Schoenbach was a wealthy Jewish banker who was raising his family in a big house with five servants. They had a cook, a nanny, a gardener, […]

Everyone wants to buy a “Value Add” apartment community. As a broker specializing in multifamily sales, I can’t tell you how many buyers want this. Let’s talk about what it means. There are several ways an investor can add value to an apartment property, especially to a community with some age or one needing attention […]

This is a whole series of creative financing techniques used on one property over a 15-year period. In 1999, I had a client who was in a pickle. She was living in an assisted living facility, but she still owned a residential triplex where she had lived for many years previously. She had given power […]

Improve the curb appeal of your income property and get better tenants, higher occupancy, and higher rents. There aren’t too many ways to find easy money in real estate, but we should use all the tools at our disposal. One of the easiest ways to increase the NOI of an income property is to improve its curb appeal. Here are six areas you may want to consider.

Sometimes we can simply improve management or make changes that don’t cost much money. But the greatest gains in NOI usually take place because the owner actually invests cash in improving a property. Here are a few ideas that may be useful in your community.

Most people like top ten lists because you know when they end, right? But if you manage, invest in, finance, or own apartments, you never want to see an end to good ideas for better performance.

There are many things an apartment owner can do to improve the bottom line in apartment operations. They fall into two broad categories: (1) increasing income and (2) reducing expenses. Some of the suggestions listed below fall into one category or the other, and some actually apply to both.

The traditional sources of profits in apartments, as in most other types of real estate investment, include cash flow, loan amortization, tax shelter through depreciation, and appreciation. But in apartments there are some potential additional sources of profit we should not forget. Miscellaneous income – Laundry – The most common miscellaneous item included in apartments […]

If you are thinking about getting involved in a multifamily affordable housing transaction, there are a number of due diligence items you will need to include in your investigation that are not typically checked out in a conventional transaction. The Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program (also known as the Section 42 housing program), is […]

The 2000 Community Renewal Tax Relief Act authorized the creation of the Renewal Community (RC) Initiative, designed to stimulate economic development in the nation’s most distressed communities. Through this initiative HUD designated 40 of the most distressed communities as RC communities, and Congress provided them with more than $5 billion in tax incentives that will […]