Rents on Main Street Persevere

Deteriorating U.S. economic conditions have slowly been pinching rents for small commercial properties. Based on Boxwood’s latest statistics, though, rents on Main Street are holding their own. That said, some small-cap real estate investors are faring better than others depending on their regional focus. For the entire story, read the latest TrendLines column at BoxwoodMeans.com.

Small-Balance Loan Delinquencies Increase

Loan delinquencies are on the rise for small-balance commercial loans, with 30-day delinquencies at 1.31 percent for loans under $5 million as of August. This performance is well within historical norms, but with dark economic skies hovering overhead, jobs shrinking, rents declining – you get the picture – the current trajectory of delinquencies is a bit troubling. Especially so when we dice up delinquencies by size of loan. For more color on this story, see Randy’s November Inside Small Balance column here or at Scotsmanguide.com.

Boxwood REIT Model Beats Indices by 60%

Boxwood’s long/short REIT stock picks have been on a tear this year. Our hedged stock selections have returned 15% year-to-date while two benchmark indices are each down roughly 45%.  That’s out performance to the tune of 60%. Check out these results. Feel free to contact us for subscription information to this REIT research.

Residential Housing Analytics Du Jour

Did you know that Boxwood tracks residential home sales, too? We have a database of all residential property sales and loan transactions nationwide. Our figures indicate that U.S. home sale prices are down 9.7% year to date, with obviously strong variances in different regions and MSAs.  We happen to track these statistics because of the strong association between prices in residential housing and small-cap commercial markets. Net result: we use home sale prices as a risk factor in our analytical models.

Btw, some of our residential data and analytics appear on other web sites. Check out a client’s platform, Policymap.com, where our home sales data is blended with tons of other data sources in a neat mapping interface.

SmallBalance.com Update

Many clients have recently inquired about our new web site. We intend to launch SmallBalance.com prior to the December holidays. Watch out for the inaugural issue of the SmallBalance.com Research Newsletter, which will serve as notification of the web site’s launch.

SmallBalance.com is all about data and analytics supporting lending decisions for small commercial loans. That support comes in the form of our new data products, Mercury Reports and VALPRO. Mercury Reports help to screen loans at origination or assess collateral risk during annual reviews with small-cap rents, small-cap sales information and economic-demographic data at the neighborhood level.

VALPRO is our automated valuation model (AVM) for small commercial properties – a suitable tool for quickly estimating values on small commercial property portfolios, or single assets. We offer VALPRO in tandem with joint venture partner, First American Commercial Due Diligence Services.

Thank you.