“Build it, and they will come.” That famous line, inspired by the movie Field of Dreams was a source of inspiration for builders everywhere. An Iowa farmer turns a cornfield into a ballpark that attracts the ghosts of Shoeless Joe Jackson and other players banned in the 1919 Black Sox Scandal. The 1989 movie uses the [...]

Usually it’s hard to excited about things in Excel, but there are a few exceptions. This is one of them.
Previously I wrote about the Watch Window as a good way to keep an eye on values on a tab other than the currently active tab, but I have always been a little annoyed by having [...]

Over the years, my experience working with investors from different walks of life has always fascinated me when it comes to their ultimate “go or no-go” decision regarding real estate investments. Some clients only look at the cap rate. Their rationale is that most of the time you can predict the first year of revenue stream [...]

                    
Welcome to the REFM Commercial Real Estate Company Directory! The Directory is an ever-expanding list of commercial real estate owners, operators, developers, investors and other principal stakeholders.
Job seekers and market analysts, have you checked out the REFM CRE Company Directory yet? It is a quick and easy way to identify the players in a [...]

In today’s post, we will look at the basics of Future Value and Present Value, using a $100 Time Zero amount and an assumed annual growth rate of 4.00%. Follow the input commands on your financial calculator to solve for the Future Value at the end of Year 1 and the Present Value of the [...]

Over 200 joined us for last week’s webinars on the 2011 Annual Report on the Real Deals Joint Venture Equity Partnership Database! If you missed learning about how deals got done in 2011, included here is a video replay of the webinar, and the accompanying slides as well. Click below to learn about 5 Surprise [...]

I attended the CCIM/IREM Economic Forecast in Phoenix on Wednesday, January 18.  Whenever I attend these events, I like to summarize my notes to help people know what others are saying in addition to my own opinions.  The event was a little different format this year from previous years, so let me summarize it based upon [...]

Problem
You have a multi-tab spreadsheet, and it is taking you too long to get from one sheet to another.
Example
Let’s say you are in cell B27 on the Assumptions tab, which reports the Investor IRR as of the last month in the model, and that this value flows into B27 from cell BH185 in the Waterfall [...]

There was a survey done by SmartPulse where nearly 50 percent of respondents said “poorly defined scopes and objectives” were the main reasons for project failures. Compare that to about 20 percent claiming projects fail, because of lack of proper resources or poor execution, and you can see that inferior planning is hampering much of [...]

Welcome to REFM’s Seven Elements of Successful Real Estate Investing E-Book! The Seven Elements framework is intended to give structure to and increase the potential for success of your real estate investment pursuits. The Seven Elements can be seen as steps to be executed in order, but when we are pursuing more than one investment at [...]