Real estate investment can be lucrative, but it's important to understand the risks. Key risks include poor locations, negative cash flows, high vacancies and problematic tenants. Other risks to consider are the lack of liquidity, hidden structural problems and the unpredictable nature of the housing market. Evaluating this situation requires understanding the replacement cost of a property to know if it is economically feasible for a new property to appear and take those tenants.
To calculate replacement cost, consider the asset class, location, and submarket of a property in that location. This helps investors know if rent can go up enough for new construction to be viable. For example, if a 20-year-old apartment building can rent apartments at a price that justifies a new construction, competition may well arise in the form of offers for new construction. It may not be possible to increase rents or maintain occupancy in the older building.
Real estate investment carries its risks. For example, you may lose money on a property in the process of changing the structure, preparing your real estate investment to rent or sell it. However, you can avoid losing money with research and a well-built strategy. This allows you to enjoy the benefits of investing in real estate, such as stable income and potentially high returns.
The housing market is very strong after the pandemic. Rates are low, the economy is recovering and people are spending more time at home. People seem to be freaking out about housing. Therefore, I thought it would be prudent to highlight the main risks in real estate investment that need to be taken into account.
Business risk reflects the possible failed operation of a project. It is determined by the type of project, its management and the market in which it is located. Each of these factors can affect the expected operational cash flows of a project. A wholly leased regional mall with long-term leases to high-credit tenants has a lower business risk than an investment in raw land that anticipates the future construction of a motel.
These key factors in the success of the project explain why sponsor due diligence is so important. Changes in the market are another key risk, but over which a trader sometimes has little control. New competition, changes in local demographics and slow regional growth would affect the business risk of a project. When investing in a real estate crowdfunding platform such as CrowdStreet, it is preferable that the sponsor has made multiple trades on the platform and has a long trading history.
If you invest in an agreement with CrowdStreet, you end up investing directly with the sponsor. So, there is no risk of CrowdStreet's platform. Financial risk mainly reflects uncertainty about the residual return on equity when debt financing is used. Debt increases the variability of return on investment for the property owner; higher leverage can mean a higher return, but since debt service must always be paid before the shareholder, it could also mean lower or even negative returns.
Financial risk also includes interest rate risk; larger-than-expected increases with an equity-rate or short-term loan will increase the debt service of a property and thus lower the rate of return for equity investors. Rising interest rates can also reduce the price that subsequent buyers are willing to pay. The rates of return that investors require for real estate tend to move with interest rates in general. Liquidity risk relates to whether and when the investment can be “withdrawn” in the future.
Real estate is generally considered illiquid assets; it is not always easily sellable. Most real estate crowdfunding platforms set up individual LLCs for individual agreements to minimize platform risk. Learning key vocabulary and concepts will help you tackle more important topics, such as how to make money on real estate and create a real estate portfolio. Investors should carefully consider their own investment objectives when evaluating the range of available real estate opportunities.
A vacancy is a huge risk for real estate investors who rely on rental income to pay their mortgage payments, insurance, property taxes and other expenses. The next risk associated with real estate investment is the possibility of generating a negative cash flow rather than a positive one. By taking a smart approach to investing in real estate, you can minimize your risks and shift the odds overwhelmingly in your favor. While a lack of liquidity is an inevitable risk to real estate investment, you can try to mitigate it by using the equity value of your property if you need immediate money.
When you invest in real estate, such as an office building or multi-family property, you must ensure that you have a sufficient number of tenants at any given time to maintain positive cash flow. Investing in real estate can help increase and diversify your income as long as you consistently generate profits each month. For this reason, when entering the real estate investment business, real estate investors should always be aware of this dynamic, understand and keep up with the market economy and its functioning, and prepare ahead of time to be able to forecast any housing market downturn. But the main real estate risk is that you may pay too much for a good location or get stuck in a cheap but bad location.
You'll always want to sell real estate in a market with bullish trends rather than in a market with downward trends. If you decide to invest in real estate through a real estate crowdfunding platform, there is a possibility that the platform will be closed for any operational reason. Remember, too, that real estate investments have many risk factors, so it's important to review all offer materials for any investment being evaluated. Once again, the best way to avoid the risk of depreciation is to be very careful in your research and analysis of the real estate market and study the economic growth of the real estate market to find a location with strong positive property appreciation.
In real estate investment, a real estate investor could end up buying an investment property with serious hidden structural problems, increasing the chances of facing unexpected repairs and maintenance costs. . .
